I’ll get to the Rogers Sisters in just a second. Right now, I would like to take some time to alert you all to a New Zealand band that should you ever get the chance to see, you should go and worship. A friend in Auckland warned me over the weekend about the Cosbys, but even his ravings didn’t really prepare me for just how utterly brilliant they are. Like Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Madness with all the feel-good hyperactive indie-pop glee of Ok Go and fronted by Sesame Street’s answer to the Reverend Jesse James, they are a band that makes you smile and smile, and clap, and rejoice in the ridiculous silliness of being alive. A New Zealand band with a sense of humour. At last!
Having missed the Rogers Sisters last time they bought their sweat-soaked B52’s addicted outfit here: by all accounts tonight was a tighter, meaner show. A mere forty minutes short, it was a set packed with, for want of a better word, content. Barely pausing for breath, they rattled through a list of songs taken evenly from recent album The Invisible Deck and previous offering Purely Evil and EP Three Fingers. Dense with feedback, gravity defining bass solos and extended Sonic Youth fuzz-outs, they managed to pack more into the half hour than I’ve seen bands pull out over hour and a half sets. The crowd was small but fervid, though it was inevitably the singles ‘Why Won’t You’ and the track that really put them on the map, ‘Zero Point’ that went down best. But away from the straight up singles, songs were pulled apart into stupendous distorted wrecks that had bassist Myuki shaking sweat over the stage to Laura’s tomheavy drumming, which is, we all agreed, pretty freakin’ good.
Singer and guitarist Jennifer is possessed with a cool, knowing presence, except when she flies into a solo. Then she’s reminiscent of Elastica’s Justine Frischmann, and is about as hot. Any woman confident enough to reapply her lipgloss on stage gets my vote. As the set ends, my only wish is that the rest of Wellington was here too, not only to revel in one of New York’s finest, but to discover the ineffable joy that is The Cosbys.
San Francisco Bath House, 10th October