Canadian dance-punk band Death from Above 1979 tore the roof off of Fine Line this past Friday, playing their seminal debut LP “You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine” in its entirety before continuing the set with an onslaught of hits from their later works.
Touring to celebrate the album’s 20th anniversary, the two mustachioed band members stepped out onto the stage and immediately began playing the album’s first track, “Turn it Out.”
Neither addressed the audience until they finished performing the album.
Although Death From Above is only a two-person band, the sound of their noisy dance-punk filled the venue, leaving no room for attendees to hear anything else.
Towering over two massive amplifier cabinets, bassist Jesse Keeler played a transparent bass guitar with his signature dirty, high-gain and mid-heavy tone. Drummer and singer Sebastien Grainger played next to Keeler, passionately yelling lyrics into a microphone while holding down tight, fast rhythms on the drums.
During their performance of “Romantic Rights,” Grainger stepped out from behind the drum set to sing directly to the audience as Keeler kept the tempo going by holding down the bassline. Grainger returned to his kit after singing the chorus and started drumming without skipping a single beat.
A small mosh-pit of younger fans broke out almost instantaneously, but the mostly older audience was too hypnotized by the swinging cymbals and thundering basslines to even notice the leather-clad youngsters thrashing around into each other.
Even during the band’s relatively slower material, there was a palpable sense of excitement in the room, as if every audience member was eagerly awaiting another breakdown to let themselves go absolutely nuts.
After performing “Sexy Results,” Grainger finally put his drumsticks down to talk to the audience. In a brief monologue, he talked about how his ex-girlfriend inspired the album’s name and how “Sexy Results” was only included to make the album’s tracklist longer.
Before the audience could catch a breath, however, Grainger picked up his drumsticks again and the band began to rip through some of their most popular songs from their later releases.
The rest of the set was similarly energetic to the beginning, with sweaty moshers constantly slamming into the unbothered middle-aged attendees mesmerized by the band’s sound.
Teen Mortgage, a punk duo from our nation’s capital, opened for the headliners, setting the mood with their messy onslaught of gritty barre chords and sludgy drumming.
Released in 2004, “You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine” is an album that combined the emotional dance-pop sensibilities of bands like The Strokes with a noisy iconoclastic sound like Sonic Youth. The album itself is entirely unique, blending romantic lyrics and danceable rhythms with a ton of electronic noise and distortion, unlike anything else.
Despite being two decades old, the album still sounds unlike anything else, a testament to the wild creativity of the crazy Canadians comprising Death From Above.
