from the killed story file, sadly
Class Actress - 12/30 @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
In a year when synth-heavy artists were more concerned with pushing you away than drawing you in – bands like Austra, Young Galaxy, and Ice Choir built monuments to alienation and otherness out of slick keyboard chords and icy harmonies in 2011 – not everyone is on board with the no-fun agenda. Witness, for one, Brooklyn pop export Class Actress, who played Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday, just returned from a short European tour and a longer jaunt around the U.S. in support of their sophomore full-length, Rapproacher.
While not exactly a buzz band, Class Actress have had praised heaped on them from surprising corners, including The New York Times, Pitchfork, and New York Magazine. It’s not terribly surprising – the band has two albums of shameless pop music under their belts, which anyone from Manhattan to Minnesota can listen to without feeling ashamed of themselves.
In their best moments, Class Actress’s thudding artificial melodies recall bands like The Human League or Kavinski, whose “Nightcall” was used to great effect in this year’s best movie in which Ryan Gosling steps through a person’s face, Drive. Songs like “Keep You,” or “Careful What You Say” feature beats at once complex and simplistic – multi-instrumentalist Scott Rosenthal always tucks a few extra layers of bloops and bleeps under the beat to keep a listener’s brain distracted while her body starts dancing. And over all that writhes the voice of frontwoman Elizabeth Harper, sighing, squeaking, and sliding around like a buxom sci-fi heroine lashed to an impossibly black obelisk on a faraway world.
While she traffics in a kind of ruffled late-night sensuality (her press photos often feature her splayed on something satin or fur), on stage Harper never quite feels like she’s totally out of control in musical ecstasy, a female disco Iggy Pop, or conversely totally in command of the situation, cooly directing the evening. Instead, she splits the difference, jumping and clapping and smiling, then catching herself every so often and remembering to ruffle her hair or teasingly trace a hand across her stomach. The makings of a star are definitely there, if she can work out the kinks.
Not that anyone in the crowd was thinking about the occasional performance hiccup – a smile too big, shoulder pads a bit too wide – that made Harper sometimes seem like Kristen Wiig acting like a pop star. As far as I could tell, they weren’t thinking about much at all, aside from dancing, and kissing and sliding away on the music. Which, well, is pretty fun.
