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Simon says: Crowd surf!
In case you weren’t aware that their afternoon show at Gypsy Avalon was their first ever show in Japan, the Brooklyn indie pop duo Matt & Kim would have reminded you over and over and over again. In fact, as Matt said almost as soon at the couple bounded out on stage grinning from ear to ear, “this is our first ever show on this continent.” I assume he means Asia, right?
Suffice to say, M&K get a lot of mileage out of very little, musically, at least. This is not necessarily a criticism. There’s much to be said for a positive stage attitude and making the audience feel good about choosing your particular performance, but M&K have elevated this consideration to such a lofty plane that the music seems almost incidental. Mainly, it’s Kim bashing away enthusiastically and rudimentally on a small drum kit and Matt with his clear, high voice, singing over his toy keyboard parts, which tend to be limited to single-note lines.
Matt’s stage patter is priceless, though I don’t know if his non sequiturs are on purpose or not. “Are you ready to get crazy again,” Matt said before the third song. Again? “Here’s a song about not caring and having a good time,” he said before the appropriately titled “summer song” “Yeah, Yeah.” “We’re gonna speed it up and get fast,” he said, and then, to show their appreciation to everyone “for watching us,” he announced they’d play the song twice as fast as usual. It was definitely fast, but more important, it got the anticipated reaction: the crowd went batshit. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show where people went batshit that many times–and they were only on stage 35 minutes. That’s because after almost every song, Kim would stand on her seat with arms upraised in triumph. At times she was so damn happy she seemed on the verge of tears. “You don’t know how this makes us feel,” she said. “To come all the fuck the way around the world to a place we’ve never been and you guys singalong with us.” Did I mention there were singalongs? At least four times. And people really sang, loudly. Granted, the most difficult lyric was “da da da.”
“Here’s a song we did a video for where we took off our clothes in Times Square,” Matt said. “I might take my clothes off again, it’s so hot,” Kim said. I’m pretty sure the whole crowd would have gone naked, too, if they’d asked them. You can’t have too much audience appreciation. They might have had a chance since as the couple went into their last song, the sun came out, which was sort of weird since the song is called “Changing to Daylight.” Matt & Kim’s contagious sunniness is certainly sincere, but maybe it’s also a sign of grace. They brought good weather with them.
photo: Yokoyama
