Women

The first time I saw Women the most remarkable thing was how many women there were in attendance. Like, seriously: 90%, but my point is that when it was over we were standing around making stupid puns about the band name. “You know who likes Women? Women!” etc. Now on a headlining tour, and performing to a crowd newly flush with poorly bearded dudes, the band left no opportunity last night for such light-heartedness.

Talk was more of the “holy shit” variety, the way they built off the energy of openers dd/mm/yyyy but contrasted that band’s goofy sense of “showmanship” with a monk-like seriousness. Where dd/mm/yyyy mugged for the cameras that weren’t there, Women maintained a stoicism for the leagues of cameras that, surprisingly, were. Are these guys famous now, or something? The crowd responded to tracks not with the quiet curiosity that greets many buzz-y bands but with wild, drunken hoots—like real fans, in other words, with roots planted firmly in the discography. Discography of two albums, that is, but still: the enthusiasm!

I have always loved Women as an Ideas band, but I’ve never been totally sure what those Ideas were. I have a feeling that in their forthcoming review of Public Strain, Betz and Lindsay will elucidate these, because Betz and Lindsay are smart. But Women struck me last night as deconstructionists of the first order, doing to garage rock something like what Califone does to roots music or what Lil’ Wayne does to the hip-hop metaphor. The triumph is in the audacity of the juxtapositions, here hewed together by the tight clatter of Michael Wallace’s drums or the neat countermelodies etched by Matthew Flegel’s bass. As the night wore on, the band’s weirdness got weirder and their hooks sharper; when they slammed things shut in a two-song encore, they sounded more fully in command of their aesthetic than they have on either of their excellent records. Which bodes well for them, career-wise, is what I’m saying.