Sounds of Asteroth

Sounds of Asteroth was careening through “Musical Taste of a Teenage Girl” like some glampunk soapbox derby when we arrived. Pint-size frontman Martin Von Sexy – a hambone vamp in the manner of Sparks’ Russell Mael – posed tenderly before 11 assorted musicians, femme backup singers, and various delightful bits of girlie bric-a-brac, squalling the snot with Loverboy ardor. This ungainly mob’s B-52’s partytime slapped some happy animation into the usually sessile dance floor. Silver Lake audiences are notoriously inert, but SoA clearly had many friends among the early arrivals. This was fine by my date, an O.C. poi-spinner named spark*l who, like all Burner ladies, would stage a production number over finding a Q-tip.

This mutant sock-hop ball temporarily adjourned for Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs’s endearingly daffy speech opening for the Finches. She emitted a long, disconnected narrative of junior high and Duran Duran cover bands in an amazed drone, piling up giggles and goodwill before their two-person irony-folk act fired up their oddball dirges and atonal ballads. The Finches’ set put the fun in “funereal” and they were applauded warmly at the finish, leaving a cozy familial vibe the headliners would stylishly exploit.

Unlike other 1990s indie-rockers, San Francisco’s Imperial Teen never came close to wearing out its welcome. While he doesn’t helm the most compelling act to come out of the wreckage of Faith No More (Trey Spruance’s Secret Chiefs 3 takes that honor with absurd ease), keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s designer-pop side-project is an impressive next best thing. IT’s initial three-album run peaked with 1999’s What Is There Not to Love?, a fondly-remembered sophomore effort sporting the freaky semi-hit “Yoo Hoo.” That song is a representative swatch off a short bolt of whimsically-textured dance-rock as distinctive in its way as J. Geils Band or Talking Heads. The band changed labels and recorded On for Merge Records before taking a five-year hiatus.

The story of Imperial Teen’s last half-decade is recounted in their new album, The Hair, the TV, the Baby & the Band, along with other sweetish-sour 20-for-life laments. The quartet’s chewy cynicism and cheeky boy-girl vocals remain, as do the ravishing bubblegum harmonies spotlighted on “Room with a View.” The reviewers and rock bloggers are (for once) showing love to such non-canonical geezers, giving the album a series of stunned raves all pointing to IT’s association with better days and friendlier vibes. I’ll leave to mushwits their banal amazement at oldsters peerlessly rocking (despite gleaming pates and widening asses) and marvel instead how such arty sophistication sounds even fresher this late in the next decade. This clever, winning comeback reveals today’s laugh-crinkled gamins as merely yesterday’s prematurely wise wunderkinder.

The opening number was sabotaged by a misbehaving bass, but the headliners treated any interruption as occasion for loving banter between themselves and with the house. Imperial Teen crunchy Disc-O-Teen indie rock ticked as sweet and eccentric as a trainman’s watch on the Benzedrine Express. The crowd tended toward the older end of the active Silver Lake set, with longtime cultists betraying lip-perfect knowledge of each delightful quasi-obscurity. Will, Roddy, Jone, and Lynn each let the blasé mask slip a little at various split-intervals to reveal identical exhilaration.

Slick and urbane to the end, Imperial Teen made a brief gesture at leaving the stage, only to file back for three more songs after the room exploded. These differed in no way in conviction and cool lethality from all that came before and the band looked as bright and tightly-wound as four middle-aged Midwich Cuckoos. I suspect they have many years to go in this treacherous biz.
- City Beat

Sounds of Asteroth was careening through “Musical Taste of a Teenage Girl” like some glampunk soapbox derby when we arrived. Pint-size frontman Martin Von Sexy – a hambone vamp in the manner of Sparks’ Russell Mael – posed tenderly before 11 assorted musicians, femme backup singers, and various delightful bits of girlie bric-a-brac, squalling the snot with Loverboy ardor. This ungainly mob’s B-52’s partytime slapped some happy animation into the usually sessile dance floor. Silver Lake audiences are notoriously inert, but SoA clearly had many friends among the early arrivals. This was fine by my date, an O.C. poi-spinner named spark*l who, like all Burner ladies, would stage a production number over finding a Q-tip.

This mutant sock-hop ball temporarily adjourned for Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs’s endearingly daffy speech opening for the Finches. She emitted a long, disconnected narrative of junior high and Duran Duran cover bands in an amazed drone, piling up giggles and goodwill before their two-person irony-folk act fired up their oddball dirges and atonal ballads. The Finches’ set put the fun in “funereal” and they were applauded warmly at the finish, leaving a cozy familial vibe the headliners would stylishly exploit.

Unlike other 1990s indie-rockers, San Francisco’s Imperial Teen never came close to wearing out its welcome. While he doesn’t helm the most compelling act to come out of the wreckage of Faith No More (Trey Spruance’s Secret Chiefs 3 takes that honor with absurd ease), keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s designer-pop side-project is an impressive next best thing. IT’s initial three-album run peaked with 1999’s What Is There Not to Love?, a fondly-remembered sophomore effort sporting the freaky semi-hit “Yoo Hoo.” That song is a representative swatch off a short bolt of whimsically-textured dance-rock as distinctive in its way as J. Geils Band or Talking Heads. The band changed labels and recorded On for Merge Records before taking a five-year hiatus.

The story of Imperial Teen’s last half-decade is recounted in their new album, The Hair, the TV, the Baby & the Band, along with other sweetish-sour 20-for-life laments. The quartet’s chewy cynicism and cheeky boy-girl vocals remain, as do the ravishing bubblegum harmonies spotlighted on “Room with a View.” The reviewers and rock bloggers are (for once) showing love to such non-canonical geezers, giving the album a series of stunned raves all pointing to IT’s association with better days and friendlier vibes. I’ll leave to mushwits their banal amazement at oldsters peerlessly rocking (despite gleaming pates and widening asses) and marvel instead how such arty sophistication sounds even fresher this late in the next decade. This clever, winning comeback reveals today’s laugh-crinkled gamins as merely yesterday’s prematurely wise wunderkinder.

The opening number was sabotaged by a misbehaving bass, but the headliners treated any interruption as occasion for loving banter between themselves and with the house. Imperial Teen crunchy Disc-O-Teen indie rock ticked as sweet and eccentric as a trainman’s watch on the Benzedrine Express. The crowd tended toward the older end of the active Silver Lake set, with longtime cultists betraying lip-perfect knowledge of each delightful quasi-obscurity. Will, Roddy, Jone, and Lynn each let the blasé mask slip a little at various split-intervals to reveal identical exhilaration.

Slick and urbane to the end, Imperial Teen made a brief gesture at leaving the stage, only to file back for three more songs after the room exploded. These differed in no way in conviction and cool lethality from all that came before and the band looked as bright and tightly-wound as four middle-aged Midwich Cuckoos. I suspect they have many years to go in this treacherous biz.
- City Beat