Show review: WU LYF at Brighton Music Hall – 4/28

Noise Floor Photography: 2012/04/28 - WU LYF &emdash;
Did England’s most mysteriously enigmatic ‘heavy pop’ band play their final show ever in Allston a few weeks back? It’s a very real possibility. At least they’ll have gone out in style, supported by Chicago’s breakout folk weirdo Willis Earl Beal.

Beal and his hosts have in common an intentional air of mystery surrounding them. WU LYF countered media attention by refusing interviews and publicity when their debut record Go Tell Fire to the Mountain was released, and that ultimately made the press all the more enamored with them. Beal hasn’t evaded the media in quite the same way, but he’s still the sole entity behind a singularly strange record which sounds like little else in the indie sphere today. His stage presence compounds on the weird magic of Acousmatic Sorcery in all the right ways, and Beal is an undeniable performer. He opened the set with a reading from a book of Bukowski, then performed an entire song a cappella “to warm up.” The rest of the set would alternate between spare, deliberately picked electric guitar and Beal singing over a backing band consisting of home-recorded instrumentals played on an old reel-to-reel tape machine. The songs ranged from straightforwardly lustful blues rockers to love-song ballads and bizarre short stories in musical form, and Beal’s arrestingly powerful voice sold every word. The set’s best moments came when he went truly unhinged, shouting lyrics over noisy, heavily percussive backing tracks and prowling the stage or standing atop a folding chair wrapped in a makeshift cape. You’re never quite sure where a Willis Earl Beal performance is headed next, and that’s part of the fun. He’s a good songwriter and a great showman, having arrived fully developed as both seemingly out of nowhere. Beal had the crowd enraptured, even if they weren’t quite sure what they were watching, and WU LYF’s choice to bring him along on this tour was a wise one.

WU LYF themselves took a slightly less theatrical approach to performance, but the energy and power of their music was present regardless. Go Tell Fire falls into an interesting chasm between genres. It’s an ‘indie rock’ album, sure, but there are elements of post-rock and other harder to pin down influences in its sound. The band’s self-imposed ‘heavy pop’ tag is about as close to an accurate genre description as you’re likely to get. Whatever classification their recorded output falls into, WU LYF translates it well on stage. Drums and bass pound and pummel while guitar and organ shake the room, but the mix never sounds oppressive or off-putting. WU LYF’s brand of noisy music is weirdly optimistic and uplifting. Their performance felt communal, with fans jumping to every beat and shouting along to even the most inscrutable of frontman Ellery Roberts’ lyrics. Clad in a denim jacket embroidered with the band’s logo, Roberts’ gravel-y Isaac Brock howl was as distinctive and attention-grabbing as ever. Even if their general air of mystery and atypical presence in the media make WU LYF seem intimidating, they mostly come across as good-natured, approachable guys on stage.

The show’s atmosphere was joyously upbeat, contrasted only by Roberts’ reserved demeanor during the set’s first half. He spent the first several songs behind a keyboard draped in a WU LYF scarf with a profound look of sadness on his face. It wasn’t until a mid-set performance of the band’s de facto anthem ‘We Bros’ that he truly warmed to the crowd. “This song is about not treating your fellow man like shit,” he told us. The band would go on to play ‘We Bros’ a total of three times that night, because why the hell not? Its first appearance drew an ecstatic crowd reaction, and it packs the most immediate punch of any of the band’s songs. The chorus refrain is tailor-made as a singalong, even if the words themselves aren’t entirely clear. It was around this point in the show that Roberts revealed why his mood had seemed so blue throughout the evening. “This is our last show ever,” he announced in the most casual tone with which one could possibly dissolve their own band. Whether or not WU LYF really did play their last ever show at Brighton Music Hall without bothering to really inform anyone remains to be seen, but there was a sense of finality to the evening from that point forward. Roberts and bandmates Joe Manning (drums), Evans Kuti (guitar) and Tom McClung (bass) seemed genuinely emotional by the end of the first encore, which featured a brilliantly executed and fitting cover of The Replacements’ ‘Swingin Party,’ as well as the first reprise of ‘We Bros.’ The band offered thank yous to managers, friends, fans and anyone else who had helped them travel the world with this enigmatic set of songs. It was a sweet moment, punctuated by the rare instance of a true unplanned encore. The crowd simply refused to leave, chanting the ‘We Bros’ refrain until the band reemerged and launched into the song once again.

“Maybe we’ll be back, someday,” Roberts said as the band departed for the third and final time. If this show really was WU LYF’s finale, they exited as strangely and unexpectedly as they entered. Fair enough. No one should’ve expected them to follow a normal career trajectory anyway. But even if another LP is somewhere on the horizon, this show was certainly the close of one era of WU LYF, and it’s one that I’m glad to have witnessed.

Noise Floor Photography: 2012/04/28 - WU LYF &emdash;

Noise Floor Photography: 2012/04/28 - WU LYF &emdash;