“We don’t want to go too bright tonight,” said She Wants Revenge frontman Justin Warfield early in the L.A. band’s set at the Blank Club Sunday.
He was talking about the lights, but longtime fans in the sold-out crowd may have been hoping it was a sign that they were in for a set’s worth of the gloomy, angular dark-dance She Wants Revenge got famous for on their first two albums.
The band is in a dicey spot right now in terms of its public image. Since their 2006 self-titled debut became a bona fide hit, they’ve been dogged by critics who accuse them of slavishly aping their 80s idols like Depeche Mode, the Cure and New Order. But now that they’ve switched up their sound somewhat for their soon-to-be-released third record, some fans are freaking out that the band may have lost its edge—or worse yet, come down with a terminal case of cheeriness.
How the group ends up feeling about their new direction remains to be seen. In a recent interview, SWR co-founder Adam Bravin told me they tried to avoid repeating anything they’d done before for this record. But he also said fans shouldn’t assume the whole album will be totally different than their recognizable style. It was hard to imagine how both could be true.
But if he seems a little defensive, it’s undoubtedly because SWR has been bizarrely misrepresented throughout their career. First, they were lumped in with early-2000s ’80s-retro bands like Interpol, Artic Monkeys and the Strokes, an utterly ridiculous classification. Then there is the constant comparison to Joy Division, despite the fact that the band claims Ian Curtis had absolutely no influence on them. (To be fair, the latter is an easy fallback for critics simply because Warfield’s voice resembles Curtis’ deep bellow.) This Blank Club show, then, was a chance to hear a lot of the new songs for the first time, and see how they fit in with the band’s previous work. Are fans right to be worried?
Well, yes. And no.
What was most obvious is that She Wants Revenge hasn’t yet found a way to integrate sunnier, upbeat new tunes like “Kiss Me” and “Must Be The One” into their set. They sound freakishly out of place next to dark older songs like “Sister” and “Red Flags and Long Nights.”
But Bravin was right in suggesting that overall, She Wants Revenge probably hasn’t changed all that much. The beginning of the set pointed the way to how they can show off different sides of their songwriting without giving their longtime fans a coronary. It started off with a new single, “Take the World,” which led seamlessly into one of the hits from their first record, “These Things.”
The key is that all of the songs come out of that same era SWR has always drawn from; they’ve just dipped into a wider palate for the new material. Once fans get used to hearing influences like Psychedelic Furs, the Smiths and even the Blade Runner soundtrack (all of which can be heard in “Must Be The One”), the different eras of the band’s work will blend better. And after they get their fair shake in front of an audience on this tour, the weaker new songs will disappear.
The Blank show wrapped up with a string of favorites, starting with “True Romance” and “Replacement.” For “Out of Control,” the crowd shouted out the “Oh my god, it’s my favorite song” line, but for a lot of them that actual honor was more likely to go to the night’s closer (and their biggest hit) “Tear You Apart.”
