Foxygen at The Loft, Atlanta, October 1, 2014

After a long, hot summer, it seems that Rocktober is finally here.  Officially, the festivities kicked off last weekend with the East Atlanta Strut, but the schedule began in earnest last night with an exciting performance by Foxygen at The Loft.  Friends of the band Dub Thompson opened.

Dub Thonpson were garage-rock anarchists, 19-year-olds creating mayhem on stage just for the lulz and the sheer fun of it.  It was fun to watch too, even though the lead guitarist kept having problems with his amp shorting out.  It sounded to me like a loose wire or connection somewhere between his guitar and his amp,  and even though he and the soundman kept trying to change things up, it never really worked out.  Five seconds into a guitar solo, and then silence (at least from his guitar - the rest of the band kept going).  Jonathan Rado of Foxygen even came on stage to offer them his guitar, but it didn't improve things.  I felt bad for them, but they looked like they were taking it in stride, sort of like, "Cool another fucked up story to tell when we get back home."  Nothing like some cowbell to fill in for that guitar part you'd been practicing all month.

But the evening was really all about Foxygen.  We last saw the band early last year at 529 opening up for Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Wampire played that night, too), and since then, the band's gone through some pretty well chronicled ups and downs.  Frankly, I thought that they wouldn't have lasted long enough for us to ever see them again, but here they were back again, with a new, ambitious double album about to drop.

There have definitely been some changes since the 2013 version of Foxygen.  Back then, touring behind We Are the 21-Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, they seemed to be either channeling or mocking (or both - your pick) late 60s psychedelic rock, even very specifically Satanic Majesties Request-era Rolling Stones.  Now they seem to be taking on 70s glam rock, and right from the very start singer Sam France rushed the stage (and jumped right into the audience) looking like a cross between a young Iggy Stooge, Hunky Dory-era Bowie, and 70s, Miss You-era Mick Jagger. The eight-person band also now includes three backup singers instead of just the one from 2013. In addition to singing backup, they danced to choreographed moves and significantly increased the energy level of the performance.  

It didn't take France long at all to take off his shirt, and he was constantly lunging at the audience, kicking his legs over the crowd, falling off the stage, and generally terrorizing the front row of the audience.  Since I was one of those in the front row, there were more than a few times when we were nose-to-nose, mere inches apart, as he sang his songs and danced his moves, which at times was frankly not a little terrifying.  The crowd was delirious, the sexual vibe was almost palpable, and in many ways this was one of the most exciting flat-out heart of rock 'n' roll shows I've seen in a long while.  It's hard to imagine trying to maintain the energy to do this night after night for an entire tour, and I wish them luck.

I can't remember the set list, but they opened (I think) with How Can You Really? from the new album, followed by On Blue Mountain from 21st Century Ambassadors.  They mixed old and new songs all night, and included most of my favorites including No Destruction and Shuggie, but interestingly they didn't play San Francisco, perhaps their best-known song.

KEXP has some really fine-sounding videos of a studio session by Foxygen, but they don't even begin to capture the anarchy and energy of their performance in front of an audience.  The band clearly wasn't interested in providing the audience with an evening of faithful reproductions of their albums, but in whipping themselves and the audience up into as much of a frenzy as they could.  This clip from Neumos' in Seattle gets a bit closer to what we experienced last night.

The new album, titled  . . . And Star Power, doesn't drop for a couple more weeks, but they were selling advance copies at the merch table.   I bought one after the show, vinyl, and can already tell that I'll be unraveling its mysteries for some time.