Sam Cooke meets Marxist-Leninist reveloutionary theory.
Ian Svenonius is pretty much the closest America will ever get to having a Billy Childish of their own. As well as being the singer and mouthpiece of several seminal DC-based acts like Weird War and The Make-Up, he's a published author, essayist and internet talk show host who's infamous for both his crazed theatrics and the anti-authoritarian rhetoric.
In fact, it’s almost impossible to talk about Ian Svenonius without having to deal with his politics. The two are so intertwined and clouded in tongue and cheek parody that it’s hard to figure out if he really means it or not. For him, rock music is a force shackled by capitalism, bourgeois machismo and consumerism: almost every band involving Svenonius has been a reconfiguration of popular music through a communist lens, with a purer, more liberated mesh of garage rock and soul. This is a guy who sees himself as a sort of cultural refugee from the United States, and when he says he wants to destroy America, I think he means it.
Right now however, it’s perhaps his work with The Nation of Ulysses that seems to be the most relevant to the support act Chapter Sweetheart. Reminding me of James Chance, Neu! Serge Gainsborough and Fugazi without really sounding like any of them, they lurch along in excellent style with groaning vocals, bubblegum keyboards and shredding guitars. Ending with an amazing London jazz-like jam that is apparently about Watford, this band have to be one of the best post-punk acts to come out of London in what feels like years.
A short break later and we’re on to the main event, and when Svenonius emerges from behind the stage in trademark bob-cut and an ice-white suit, you know automatically that you’re in for a good night. In many ways Chain and the Gangis almost a continuation of The Make-Up insofar as the music is a bluesy blend of garage and soul rendered in boy/girl vocals and call-and-response choruses. But this is way more groovy than any of their stuff. If The Make-Up was an attempt to recreate the Stooges, then this is an attempt to retrofit the Velvet Underground with a radical socialist manifesto.
As with most things Svenonius-related, Chain and the Gang is a band with a political message at its heart, and throughout the hour-long set we're constantly reminded through poetic interludes and steered discussions that this is a world where The Man twists freedom and liberty into the right to darken our skies with smog, pollute our rivers with crap, and feed our kids poison. It sounds like heavy going, but it isn’t: thanks to a sense of fun that prevails, what is in effect an hour-and-a-half treatise on Situationism feel more like open-forum jazz meeting a fairly anarchic punk show.
The band ends with an awesome rendition of ‘Deathbed Confession’ where various absurd characters confess to the killings of JFK, MLK and Malcolm X on the orders of FedEx and the CIA. It’s a song that pretty much sums up Chain and the Gang perfectly – this is not your hippy dread-locked singer songwriter spouting the same old crap about solving the world problems through free hugs and good will; this is the kind of music that tells you that when the system plays rough, you’d better fight dirty. Revolutionary Marxism never sounded so fun!
To see what else is happening at Cargo click here. Chain and the Gang have a record 'Down with Liberty...Up With Chains' out on K Records right now.
Image courtesy of Kelly O.
Add an event
Frieze Art Fair to launch new section for young galleries in 2012
Frieze have today announced details for the 2012 edition, their tenth art fair in London. Taking place...