An old pic -can’t find anything from the show!!
Here’s the trick about the Kissaway Trail. It’s not that the atmospheric art-rock alt band were different at their way too short set at Mercury Lounge last night, it is that they were from a different place.
After the show I asked guitarist Søren B. Corneliussen whether he wrote in English or translated his lyric from Danish to English. He writes in both languages and anybody who has worked in translation can you tell that something strange happens to words when you move from one language to another: they take on other meanings, deeper colors. It is even true with the some what simple pop lyrics of Abba and the convoluted weirdness of Bjork and for the more depressed tones of Kissaway Trails: “you can change your heart, you can change your ways…” who says you can change you heart???
Last night that found in translation was reflected deeply, deeply, deeply in the music. During one song four of the five singers sang the chorus together, in another Soren and Thomas both play the keyboards and for all their Yankee caps and torn jeans they feel otherwise.
On “61”, a song from their first album, they take a two guitar attack into the void and it is all forceful emotions and peaks and peaks and peaks till the band melts into the drums before seguing into the next number. It is as if the trancelike disquiet of Sleep Mountain (their second album to be released April 20th) has been ruffled by a cold Copenhagen night: it is a frigidity warming intself by sound: the suburbanites hitting concrete.
Like Joy Division before them (but not musically), KT is all catharcism hidden in depression. On “New Lipstick”, a song that didn’t leave an impression on Sleep Mountain, Thomas tells us to dance, singalong, and though nobody does we sure coulda had we wanted to: live it’s a party song, on the album, it is a keyboard plaint.
The band weave dense, cross textual currents that can become uplifting instrumentals or obtuse downward spirals of sound. They are crafty and intense, and like all great live bands, a little arrogant. Their first gig in the States and KT don’t seem awed by the situation, though ther is a suggestion of extra muscle in the delivery.
The set is really short, too short, maybe forty minutes tops. But it is firmly structured and feels lived in, feels like a real good rock group bringing it on. And also, a real rock starry rock group-the boys in the band are good looking, the drummer looks as if he just dropped out of hight school (the audience are pretty tasty as well. All co-eds with cute smiles. Reminded me of the ridiculous high quota of knock out blonde chicks in Cophenhagen the one time I went there). The little girls will get it.
But the Kissaway Trail are the real thing. They have perfected a sorta subdued anxiety that blows up on stage. Will it sell? I don’t see why not. What they should do is a tour of college towns across the States, the girls will swoon and the boys will frown.
Meanwhile, back on stage, Thomas is inviting us to tomorrow’s (sold out) concert opening for the Temper Trap “It’s the same set as this one” he says matter of factly.. And then they end with one of the best songs they’ve written, “SDP” and I just wish it wasn’t ending so soon because KT’s uniqueness isn’t just translatable, it’s danceable as well.