Art Brut in Rome

So, my ears are still ringing from the Art Brut show I saw last night. I’d seen them before once in DC, and was very pleased when I first saw the posters advertising this performance. In their two hour set, they played almost every song from their two albums. Art Brut is very much a band where what they play live is easily heard and sung along to. Their onstage shtick is hillarious, and frontman Eddie Argos keeps it interesting by tweaking well known lyrics. In “Moving to L.A.”, instead of saying he was going to drink “Hennessy with Morrissey,” he subbed in “a Long-Island Iced Tea with Jay-Z.” Drummer Mikey Breyer didn’t even sit throughout the set, probably subscribing to the logic of “well if they can’t sit, why should I?” Especially enjoyable was a new song, probably called “Art Brut against Satan” because part of the chorus was “don’t worry we can take him/this is Art Brut against Satan!”

The Roman audience was pretty rowdy. I received several bruises from their incessant moshing, but at least they were excited by the English band. Two songs from the first album address Italy, including “18,000 Lira”, which ends with the line “sounds like a lot of money.” At one point, Argos asked the audience, “I heard there was football tonight. Who won, Rome (Roma) or Milan (Inter)?” The audience members, many of who had been watching the game on a large projection screen outside before the show, answered that it was a draw. “Well,” said Argos, “at least Rome doesn’t have a song about erectile dysfunction named after it.” And then he started the band in to the other Italy-based song, “Rusted Guns of Milan.” Check out some pictures here. (I couldn’t resist.)