Phantogram

The more space and time that prevails between a showgoer and a show the more readily reactions of the showgoer to the show become perfunctory and suspicious. Which is helpful in this case, in the way I responded to seeing Phantogram, in the way I (a heterosexual male) again returned to the Doug Fir (where I most recently witnessed Beach House) and this time brought my girlfriend (a heterosexual female). What I mean is: the lead singer of Phantogram is really hot.

Her Christian name is Sara Barthel. But I’m sure a majority of audience members, for the most part there to see headliner Antlers and for the most part male, would not remember her as that. This also excludes the other half of the duo, Josh Carter, who sings just as much as Barthel but is less ostensibly easy on the eyes in the grand scheme of things, things being their these-two-humans-playing-live-music-cohesively-before-a-live-crowd dynamic. And it’s a dynamic I tried to express before—here is a band occupied wholly by such surface dichotomy; their pace, push, platitudes, and PR seem built around their boy parts and their girl parts and how those parts are different. (I’m reminded of that kid in Kindergarten Cop reminding Arnold of proper genital terminology.) It’s only unfortunate in that Eyelid Movies could have been better had the gulf between his and hers not been un-leapable, but, realistically, it’s a good album with some songs way obviously better than others.

Seeing Phantogram live is seeing Eyelid Movies as succinctly manifest as possible. On the left Barthel sorta bops and squiggles behind some Stonehenge-sized bangs and straightforward keyboard setup; on the right Carter, who dresses and carries himself as unassumingly as possible, plays guitars, twists the occasional knob, and is incessantly berated by strobe lights. I’m talking like every song, every song a wind machine away from a terrible Pearl Jam video. It’s an odd and thankless sight: Barthel bathed in plain, naked set dressing while simultaneously Carter is surrounded by threats of seizure and nausea. What is already obvious (how the songs are split so definitively between the two members, the “more pleasant” tunes wreathed in Barthel’s voice) is forced, somewhat painfully, in a live setting, right down the audience’s collective throat. Barthel, like I said, is easy on the eyes; Carter hurts to look at.

The audience was rapt and the band played well, sparing us the obligatory PDX ego-baiting while running quickly through their debut and tagging on something we were told was left off the album which, in my opinion, should’ve been a decision to re-evaluate, but of all the sursurrant nothings that filled between-song administrative duties, what rose now and then above the din involved, simply, how attractive Barthel was. Still is, I’d imagine—a comment I’m making not to enter into a discussion about how even indie culture is beset with people who like music because they want to fuck the person who makes that music, a discussion about how Joanna Newsom is pretty, but a comment I’m making to wonder, aloud, how willfully Barthel and Carter use their serendipitous benefits to gain a foothold in a market otherwise saturated by duos as musically proficient as them but perhaps not as cosmetically so. Are the strobe lights exploitation or satire? Are her bangs real? How many Phantogram fans actually care?

Meanwhile, the same dude who lectured me about using my debit card to buy beer only a month or so ago grinned stupidly serving my girlfriend beer, grinned even stupidlier as she paid with her debit card, grinned stupidliest as she went back for two more. She was never lectured. Soon after, Antlers played; audience members discussed the band’s songcraft.