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Fight Like Apes @ Mercury Lounge 3/13/2009

You Are The Hat / Do You Karate? / Digifucker / Jake Summers / I’m Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me / Tie Me Up With Jackets / Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues / Lend Me Your Face (featuring Nick Minichino) / Megameanie / Battlestations

Even when they’re worn out from travel and their singer has a scratchy throat from exposure to Aer Lingus air conditioning germs, Fight Like Apes rock out with a tuneful intensity matched by very few new, contemporary bands in the best of health. For one thing, they’re quite good at making their job seem fun — they thrash and writhe about, smash keyboard stands before the third song is through, and goof off whenever they are not preoccupied with nailing their dynamic, visceral hooks. Near the end of their abbreviated set, just after belting out a rather skull-rattling version of McLusky’s “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues,” MayKay recruited good ol’ Nick Minichino to sing the chorus of “Lend Me Your Face,” mainly on account of his highly enthusiastic dancing in the front row. He did a great job, but I still want to hear her do it. Not that I really needed another good reason to want to see this band again, but you know.

Fight Like Apes “I’m Beginning To Think You Prefer Beverly Hills 90210 To Me”

Given the current state of the global economy, it is perhaps bad form to take so much delight in a song about people getting fired. But then again, a lot of the pleasure comes from the fact that the band themselves are doing the firing, and the listener gets to feel the vicarious thrill of being in the position to sack a person, particularly one who has wronged them. Even though the song concludes with the group shouting “you’re so fired!” in rounds, there’s a lightness in the music — the waltz beat, the colorful synth tones, the smiling vocals — that keeps it from sounding too bitter and mean-spirited.

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