Factoid of the night: The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas' father is the president of Elite Models. Now there's rock history just waiting to happen.
And rock history is precisely what New York's latest hipster poster boys are all about - The Strokes don't so much reference but rifle the Velvets and Television, and The Fall back catalogue for cues on sound and style.
They're competent and energetic enough, though, which - perhaps in these hard times for the New York music scene - is enough to qualify them for their opening slot at this same venue, a few weeks hence, and for the slobbering masses of A&R folk who have arrived early to take in their set.
The A&Rs leave shortly thereafter, leaving a few inches of breathing room for the other slobbering masses, the ones waiting for Doves to blow their minds. In as much as this is their first New York show, and the hype from abroad has been - shall we say - extensive, this is only fair. Plus, Doves are models in another rock history mold, that one about struggling through adversity, only to emerge triumphant and bigger in spirit and vision than before their blows with hardship.
Thus they take the stage with licks of flame projected not only onto the back screen, but onto their bodies as well, playing - yep - 'Firesuite'. Upon which follows the incandescent 'Rise'. Phoenixes rising glorious from the fire, etc. It's almost too perfect.
Not so the musicianship on display tonight, which is just perfect: it seems a misnomer to call the purveyors of tunes as swirlingly shambolic as 'Break Me Gently' and 'Lost Souls' "tight," but it's clear that the brothers Williams, their confrere Jimi Goodwin, and -er, some guy on keyboards - have reached that elusive apex of musical communication where all heads seem plugged into the same synapses.
What with Andy's drum set mic'd within an inch of its life, Jimi wrestling demons out of his bass with a vicious energy up ranking with Mani's (of Stone Roses and Primal Scream infamy), and Jez trading between confident vocals, acoustic guitar and rambling electric
jam sessions like the one that caps off 'Catch The Sun', Doves manage the truly impressive trick of sounding as polished live as they do on their ingeniously recorded album.
So - at the risk of calumny being heaped upon my head - it seems a bit niggling to complain that Doves' musical virtuosity is at the service of songs that sound, all too often, like (say it!) Tears For Fears as fronted by Kevin Shields. No, seriously. 'Sea Song' comes on like a shoegazing anthem, but it crescendoes like one of Roland Orzabal's monsters from 'The Seeds Of Love', albeit with the hippy-dippy choruses chopped off, with
expansively tumultuous drift served up in their place.
'Catch The Sun' and 'Lost Souls' - mesmerizing though they are at times - also count as prime offenders in that department. There's nothing inherently wrong with copping a feel from discredited bands - Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle is an ELO fan for chrissakes, and he's a bloody genius. But then Grandaddy tamper with their forbears' sounds so much that the similarities are a second or third thought, not a first one.
And for the same reason, Doves' 'Rise' is better than almost anything else tonight, burying the pop and blossoming cataclysms under layers of distortion and striking the right note of flimsy, tripped-out beauty.
Also better is encore opener 'Here It Comes' - stoned-out, rambling, rambunctious, this is the kind of song Mancunian bands used to be famous for, and darn well ought to be.
It's gratifying to have the show's amplified sweetness give way to some proper hard boy action, and - against all odds, more gratifying yet to have it closed out with the well-nigh Balearic rock of their Sub Sub classic 'Space Face'. As The Strokes might well advise Doves, genius steals, and nicking tricks from the rock dustbin can be all to the good. It just depends whose tricks you're stealing, and how.
