Fitz and the Tantrums were sharing the bill with the Heavy on Thursday night at the Hammer museum, and it was probably the most successful show of the ‘Also I like to rock series’ so far, seeing the very large crowd which was carefully counted by the museum employees at the entrance.
Recently, I have noticed a lot of bands which look really good, I mean bands that are elegant and whose every detail seems to have been studied and elaborated.
Fitz and the Tantrums is a great looking band on stage, they have style and their large Motown sound fits with their classy and grandiose charm. I said grandiose because they are quite a large band and their impressive horn section, that produces an explosive sound, is one of their interesting and original characteristics. Here, saxophones and trumpets, which have replaced the guitars, are the center of attraction (besides the two singers of course) whereas the vintage organ produces this vivid and fully familiar sound. In their funky-soul world, there is no need left for something else.
For a relatively young band (a first show in 2008 started everything) they show a total professionalism, as you would swear they have been in the business forever.
But talking about center of attraction, the numerous photographers could not detach their objectives from the two singers. It was as if Noelle Scaggs, a classy and pretty woman in a white and sexy dress, and Michael Fitzpatrick ‘Fitz’, a svelte late-period David Bowie silhouette in a stylish grey suit and black shirt, were competing for the stage space, moving toward each other back and forth, harmonizing almost aggressively at times but completing each other to the perfection with a high-pitch male voice and a warm and full female voice.
Their interaction with the crowd was great and totally unforced, encouraging people to clap and dance, fueling the public with a constant energy that you would not necessary expect from a so well-dressed band! And it is all about moves for the power duo, they never stopped dancing frenetically and restlessly, doing all they could to occupy the full stage: it was bold and fun but they always kept the aesthetic aspect of the show very high.
It must be pretty hard to revive vintage soul from the 60’s and 70’s without being a simple copy, or worst a pale copy. But what Fitz and the Tantrums do is different, far from being a copy, their sound is genuinely original, although the somewhat familiarity of it is certainly what draws immediately people’s attention.
Fitz, who was born in France but moved to LA as a kid, showed us a little bit of his skills as he recited a few lines in an excellent French during the song ‘News for you’
‘J’ai des nouvelles pour toi/c’est la fin de notre histoire toi et moi/Tu m’as brisé le coeur pour la dernière fois/Et maintenant quand je me promène dans la nuit/Je regarde la lune les étoiles et les voitures qui passent/Je regarde tout sans toi’
Which, to summarize, is a bold and in-your-face announcement of the end of the story to a lover, ‘I look at everything without you’.
‘Rich girls will break your heart and poor girls will take all your money’ sings Fitz in ‘Rich girls’, I don’t know if it’s true (ask Vampire Weekend for that one) but love and bad endings is a recurrent theme in their EP ‘Songs for break-ups’
By bringing back elegance, as well as saxophones and trumpets to the indie scene, they have certainly filled a void seeing how people were enjoying themselves last night.
Their full debut album, ‘Pickin’ Up the Pieces’ will be released on August 24th on Dangerbird Records. Before, you can download one of their songs ‘MoneyGrabber’ for free here: