I felt a tap on my arm as I was standing audience right last week for an opener’s set at Bowery Ballroom, and before I had even fully turned to see who was tapping me or why, the same force quickly guided me several feet to my left. I had snapped a few pictures with a slight digital camera and scribbled a page of notes in pocket-sized memo pad; it momentarily seemed that the stringy-haired, tattoo-armed Security Dude, oft-planted by the stage’s right side door, felt I was breaking some rule.
Then, producing a mobile flip phone, he pointed it toward the stage, took a few carefully employed seconds to line up his angle and framing, and he snapped a photo of California rock foursome The Muslims; it seemed he just needed me out of the way so he could snap a grainy, miniature masterpiece of these four white guys, decked in short-sleeved collared shirts and slender black denim.
Then, to no one in particular, Security Dude made an authoritative announcement: “These guys are killer!”
The Muslims had, indeed, just hit their Tuesday-night stride. Ripping through “Bright Side”—the closing track off their self-titled, ten-song debut LP—the jaded 21-and-over crowd crept just as close to the stage as the hipster handbook allows, lured by The Muslims’ raw, punk-tinged revitalization of rock’s standard two guitars/bass/drums approach.
Lead singer and guitarist Matt Lamkin, attacking his instrument with the necessary implementation of The Muslims’ strum-hard-and-repeat aesthetic, stood center stage, pouring out “Bright Side” and its simple narrative of young ennui.
“I’m sleepwalking through my days and nights,” he spoke/sang, replacing the occasionally laconic charm he has on the band’s recordings with a tinge of urgent-to-no-end, early-20s frustration. Concluding the terse verse by noting his efforts “fighting a series of losing of fights,” he then spat out a few joyfully scripted “all rights” and “oh yeahs.”
And it may be these endlessly but classically re-used placeholder lyrics that elevate The Muslims, on record and in concert, to the appreciable level of the straight-ahead rock band (The Replacements, or more succinct work from The Velvet Underground) of your choice: The listener relates to Lamkin’s decrying of his own “watching the days go by”; but caught in the song’s taut momentum, one doesn’t think to question the explicit affirmation that is a verse ending in “All right!”
What The Muslims offered (and they offered it, unsmilingly, to an eventually convinced crowd that was still two hours away from the headlining set from The Walkmen they had paid for) was rock conceived and executed on a winning formula.
Dave Lantzman’s three or four spare bass notes jogging alongside a to-the-point, fill-less back beat from Brian Hill announced the band’s intention at the start of each number. Guitarist Matty McLoughlin typically entered in the first ten seconds, and an interplay of minimal output from each member offered, when combined with Lamkin, a bloody red helping of primal rock satiation.
The Muslims—name aside—are a time-tested main course of American music: white guys playing the instruments every band before them has played, in much the same manner everyone before has played them. To extend the metaphor further, it’s an exceedingly well-made hamburger (and just as I’ll avoid seriously addressing the band’s name here, I’ll also be skirting the related temptation to make a Halal joke).
We return to the tastes we know, eating them again and again, appreciating a particularly well-made dish that meets the basic requirements but still catches our attention. As The Muslims ran through the catchy two-and-a-half-minute “Extinction” last week, Lamkin broke out his falsetto for less than one second midway through the song, that same single note—a ringing “you”—being the only place (either on the record or during the show) that he shifted into that high register: It was the subtle but necessary ingredient that gave the song its unique, dependable flavor.
Security Dude returned toward the end of The Muslims set, and again I only noticed he had reappeared when he gently moved me aside to take a photo. The guy was still yelling, “You guys are killer!” at the stage, and it seemed like he oughta know.
I can only imagine how many bands he’s seen at Bowery Ballroom; he looked like he’d had his share of burgers, too.
Then, producing a mobile flip phone, he pointed it toward the stage, took a few carefully employed seconds to line up his angle and framing, and he snapped a photo of California rock foursome The Muslims; it seemed he just needed me out of the way so he could snap a grainy, miniature masterpiece of these four white guys, decked in short-sleeved collared shirts and slender black denim.
Then, to no one in particular, Security Dude made an authoritative announcement: “These guys are killer!”
The Muslims had, indeed, just hit their Tuesday-night stride. Ripping through “Bright Side”—the closing track off their self-titled, ten-song debut LP—the jaded 21-and-over crowd crept just as close to the stage as the hipster handbook allows, lured by The Muslims’ raw, punk-tinged revitalization of rock’s standard two guitars/bass/drums approach.
Lead singer and guitarist Matt Lamkin, attacking his instrument with the necessary implementation of The Muslims’ strum-hard-and-repeat aesthetic, stood center stage, pouring out “Bright Side” and its simple narrative of young ennui.
“I’m sleepwalking through my days and nights,” he spoke/sang, replacing the occasionally laconic charm he has on the band’s recordings with a tinge of urgent-to-no-end, early-20s frustration. Concluding the terse verse by noting his efforts “fighting a series of losing of fights,” he then spat out a few joyfully scripted “all rights” and “oh yeahs.”
And it may be these endlessly but classically re-used placeholder lyrics that elevate The Muslims, on record and in concert, to the appreciable level of the straight-ahead rock band (The Replacements, or more succinct work from The Velvet Underground) of your choice: The listener relates to Lamkin’s decrying of his own “watching the days go by”; but caught in the song’s taut momentum, one doesn’t think to question the explicit affirmation that is a verse ending in “All right!”
What The Muslims offered (and they offered it, unsmilingly, to an eventually convinced crowd that was still two hours away from the headlining set from The Walkmen they had paid for) was rock conceived and executed on a winning formula.
Dave Lantzman’s three or four spare bass notes jogging alongside a to-the-point, fill-less back beat from Brian Hill announced the band’s intention at the start of each number. Guitarist Matty McLoughlin typically entered in the first ten seconds, and an interplay of minimal output from each member offered, when combined with Lamkin, a bloody red helping of primal rock satiation.
The Muslims—name aside—are a time-tested main course of American music: white guys playing the instruments every band before them has played, in much the same manner everyone before has played them. To extend the metaphor further, it’s an exceedingly well-made hamburger (and just as I’ll avoid seriously addressing the band’s name here, I’ll also be skirting the related temptation to make a Halal joke).
We return to the tastes we know, eating them again and again, appreciating a particularly well-made dish that meets the basic requirements but still catches our attention. As The Muslims ran through the catchy two-and-a-half-minute “Extinction” last week, Lamkin broke out his falsetto for less than one second midway through the song, that same single note—a ringing “you”—being the only place (either on the record or during the show) that he shifted into that high register: It was the subtle but necessary ingredient that gave the song its unique, dependable flavor.
Security Dude returned toward the end of The Muslims set, and again I only noticed he had reappeared when he gently moved me aside to take a photo. The guy was still yelling, “You guys are killer!” at the stage, and it seemed like he oughta know.
I can only imagine how many bands he’s seen at Bowery Ballroom; he looked like he’d had his share of burgers, too.
