An enthusiastic audience member rose above the crowd noise to ask a question during a recent Saturday night opening slot at Manhattan’s Knitting Factory. “Why are you called The Ballet?” she shouted, catching the five-piece in between presenting its smart and melodic meditations on (by-and-large) gay romantic life in the city. The band gave no definitive response—instead promptly presenting another piece of tightly composed indie-pop—but when Ballet frontman Greg Goldberg was asked the question over tea later in a more intimate setting, he was willing to be a little more candid.
“In some ways I think it’s a little too loaded,” he said of the group’s moniker. But where a brief consideration of the name by a casual listener might evoke The Ballet’s more obviously fey elements (pretty string parts and stuck-in-your-head melodies), Goldberg is quick to point out that the art of ballet also requires “poise and strength”—elements the group may be more seriously courting with recent addition of a live drummer (replacing a clicking iPod that offered programmed beats) and more bass-heavy performance style.
Still, not even the most drastic changes in instrumentation would allow one to mistake The Ballet for typical rock fare. The 11 cuts on their self-released debut, Mattachine!, are literate, adult, slyly-permissive contemplations on not simply love, but rather modern romance’s quirks and moral ambiguities. “You’re cheating on your boyfriend,” Goldberg repeats during the chorus of an early, driving number from the album, the song’s narrator the beneficiary of another’s loose morals. “And that’s alright.”
And though the party being addressed in said song may be unfaithful, fans of The Ballet are anything but. It was clear that the sizable crowd that had amassed—an attentive group of clap-along lyric-mouthers showcasing some rather non-Balletic dance moves—weren’t just there early, waiting idly to see the headliner.
In fact, the main act that night, prolific Brooklyn group Bishop Allen, is just the latest in a string of lauded indie bands that have brought The Ballet on board to warm up the crowd on recent dates. Not long ago, the group headed up to Canada for a one-off gig supporting one-man band and Arcade Fire collaborator, Final Fantasy, and The Ballet’s bond with Austin, TX, rockers, Voxtrot, is such that, apart from having opened for them at Bowery Ballroom late last year, they had Voxtrot lead singer Ramesh Srivastava contribute backing vocals to “Corduroy,” Mattachine!'s tale of love quickly gained and lost.
Don’t necessarily expect to hear that or any other particular cut when you listen to The Ballet play, however, as Goldberg has already written several new songs the group is testing out onstage, and he hopes to have enough fresh material to finish a second record soon.
Goldberg not only has a gift for songwriting, but enjoys the process of sitting down to conjure words and melodies and seeing what sticks, which he says is less formulated (“It’s not a mathematical calculation”) than organic, strumming and “singing all over the place [until] something good happens.” And while some songwriters might think that if they can't again conjure something created spontaneously, it may not have been good enough to justify remembering, Goldberg considers another, less-considered possibility for a would-have-been song that falls between the cracks:
“Maybe it was too good.”
May 26, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St. (betw. B’way & Church St.), 212-219-3132; 11:45, $15/$18.
