Controlled Chaos

Last week the lights went down at the Bowery Ballroom in the middle of Les Savy Fav’s show. Tim Harrington, LSF’s bald and bearded behemoth singer, wanted darkness. He asked everyone to lie down on the floor and snuggle while the band played a “sleepy lullaby.” This moment was the culmination of a pair of back-to-back, sold-out shows (the previous night’s being at the new Music Hall of Williamsburg) celebrating Let’s Stay Friends, the quasi-reunion album they had just released. The new album starts off with the mellow, autobiographical “Pots and Pans” before launching into a full-throttle sonic barrage that pummels you with piercing guitars, relentless rhythms and repeating mantras like, “This is getting old, this is getting old.”

None of this material was getting old last week as LSF was playing most of the songs live for the first time. It was there, in the live setting, where the band’s music and all of its potential was fully realized. There, on the dance floor, where the sweat and spit and spilled beer of the throbbing mosh soaked the devoted and baptized new converts. Even the spectators (like me), who nodded and swayed on the sidelines (staying dry has its merits) felt a cathartic release. The show reminded me why I go to see live music—because concerts have the potential to connect us in a primal, ecstatic way, a way that shamans do in “less civilized” societies.

Tim Harrington is the shaman of this tribe. Not to take any credit away from the rest of the band—guitarist Seth Jabour, bassist Syd Butler, drummer Harrison Haynes and “deep collaborator” Andrew Reuland are all equally crucial players—but Harrington is the one who transforms what could be another average night at the club into a chaotic slam party. Although his antics—the balance-beam rail walking, the stripping, the off-stage crowd-frolicking—might seem silly or contrived in lesser hands, Harrington pulls it off perfectly. He has absolute control of the room on a level that’s both profound and lighthearted. (At the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago a few years ago, Harrington convinced a standing crowd of 10,000 to sit down on the field).

The secret to his power might be in his chameleon ways. Both punk and comedian, Harrington is equal parts Johnny Rotten and Gallagher. Vocally he goes from faint to falsetto, from raspy to thunderous. And the man likes his costumes—capes, wigs, masks and crocheted shawls. At the Williamsburg show, he morphed from a crop-toting equestrian to a disembodied eagle to a big-and-tall underwear model. He is a shapeshifter, a man who wears many hats, literally and figuratively, on and off the stage.

This was never more apparent than when I met up with Harrington the morning after the Bowery show. The six-foot-something Bigfoot that had shaken the Lower East Side the night before was now a gentle giant coming out for Sunday brunch with his wife and sleeping child. More sides were revealed when we started talking about his various creative outlets. Wanting to become “a general artist person,” Harrington studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design, where he met the other members of Les Savy Fav. The painting singer, or singing painter, now designs textiles with his wife. Among other things, they make oven mitts and tote bags from their basement-operated company, Deadly Squire. Harrington says he now wants to get more involved with film, maybe by shooting some humorous tour guide videos during an upcoming visit to Europe.

This diversity in interests is one of the reasons there was such a long gap since LSF’s last release (their last album of originals, Go Forth, was released in 2001, although the band also put together Inches, a compilation of singles, in 2004). “Over the years we’ve all wanted to do so many different things,” explains Harrington. “And we didn’t want the band to stunt us and keep us from doing all the other things we were interested in. We all love music, but we never thought of it as a valid career idea. We’ve actually worked extra, extra hard to keep it in this special place where we never rely on it for real money. Or rely on it in a way where we have to answer to it. The band does what we want it to do, not us do what the band wants us to do.”

The men of LSF have spent most of the past several years pursuing their individual goals, like opening galleries and starting families. They weren’t sure when, and in what way, LSF would resurface. “We had to grind it to a full halt, tear it entirely apart and build it back in a way that fits us. We had doubts that it was even possible. So for me the record is really triumphant. I think now we own [the band] in a way that’s even more solid than before.” When it comes to artistic integrity and the actualization of dreams, Les Savy Fav is a living commercial proving ownership does indeed have its privileges.

With Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem & Blonde Redhead, October 6, Randall’s Island, 3:30, $39.50.