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NEON
Mercury Lounge Pre-Show
Filter Grade: 90%
by Brendan Sullivan | 01.01.2007

Neon--Insert Pun About Lighting Up The Night

A new club opens every week in New York City. If you pay attention,you'll notice that the same staff that opened the last place have already quit and are cycling around five new places already. But tonight at a new place called Movida they've got some heavy hitters on promotion staff,including Michael T. of Motherfucker Party group who first brought Bloc Party to New York.

Somewhere in this crowd, three Australians stand in the corner drinking strange beers from the open bar, nodding to one another. Half the nod is a wide-eyed holy-shit-the-manager-of-Jet is taking us out in New York City. And the other half is still a genuine, refreshing, unjaded high-five:Holy shit, guys-free beer!

The only people they know in the bar are from their new record label,V2 and every time they mention that to someone outside of this office party from hell they get the same response. Oh, the White Stripes label? They came around early this year on a 30 date Aussie Invasion tour with Jet, The Vines and The Living End. And since then they've been in the studio with Steve Macdonald (Redd Kross), Dale Crover (The Melvins),and engineer John Agenello (The Breeders). Clearly they are a band who will become a name to drop. Not bad for two guys and a girl from rural Australia.

In two days they will amaze the shit out of a sizeable crowd at Mercury Lounge. For one half hour. But tonight-the night I was talking about before-I get a tingling in my rock-critic earlobes and I have a vision-a vision not of the band, but of me. I'm on VH1's I Love the 00's in ten years explaining what these guys were like when they first came to New York on their own.

I grill their manager about how he's selling them. He says they're clearly a cross between Cheap Trick, Red Kross and Tom Petty. Somewhat perplexed I turn to guitarist Josh Bitmead and ask how he sees them. "I don't know, really. But I think I'm going to start asking rock critics what genre of rock critic they are," he laughs and hands me a cigarette. "Just kidding."

That sense of humor may become a survival tool when their new record comes out. For now they're taking a cue from the Beastie Boys and playing it cool until their record comes out. It's finished and it's exactly how they want it to sound, Bitmead says. But for now they have nothing to lose from being anointed by every cardinal of rock & roll.

And who doesn't want to be the band that everyone heard of but few have heard? There will be more clubs and more shows and more rock journalists pressing them with lame questions. But hopefully-hopefully-they'll make it through this summer, give us a great song to rock out to on hot days and get some of us to valet park our flying cars to VH1 studios in 2015.