Making the familiar trek to my favorite venue in Seattle, the Showbox at the Market, there was one thing in my mind that I couldn’t help but giggle gleefully.
I’m seeing Johnny Marr tonight.
Well, The Cribs, but the recent addition of ex-Smiths guitarist Marr to the formerly all-brother lineup surely upped the cool factor of The Cribs. And on this night, the crowd the Yorkshire band brought out was quite the assortment. Standing in line outside the Showbox, I struck up a conversation with a few high school students who – serendipitously – lived in the same town as I, an hour south of Seattle. They’d come out, seemingly just to see a band, as they asked me what The Cribs sounded like. I tried to think of something that they might know. Unaware at that point that they were a few years younger than I expected, I mentioned the Libertines. They stared blankly.
“Like the Arctic Monkeys?”
“Kinda, like earlier Arctic Monkeys?” I replied, in an effort to give them some description. They made me feel old.
Once the show got started, I still felt kind of old. Former Be Your Own Pet frontwoman Jemina Pearl opened the show, donning a walking brace on her right foot, but still managing to thrash around the stage like she didn’t have a bum foot. Accompanied by her pubescent-looking band, Miss Pearl evoked a punk much older than she looked and sounded. Now to my knowledge, she’s had some legendary recognition of her own – featuring Iggy Pop on her obnoxiously titled “I Hate People” on her debut, Break It Up. She played through most of the songs off Break It Up in this 45-minute slot, holding the equally youthful room with suc
h tunes like “Looking For Trouble,” “D Is For Danger” and “Band on the Run.” I quite enjoyed her sound; it was like the not-quite-as-angry Be Your Own Pet, but much tougher and dirtier than a certain band fronted by a young flame-trussed female getting loads of airplay right now.
At this point, the floor was still relatively vacant, but the bar had filled up a lot since I’d last looked. This is when I started to realize the ratio of actual Cribs fans to Johnny Marr fans, about 2 to 1. There were those crazy teenagers flogging around right in front of the stage and those over 35 that bobbed their heads in the back, reminiscing about when they saw The Smiths for the first time.
Right on time, at 10:15, brothers Gary, Ryan and Ross Jarman, along with Johnny Marr took the stage to loads of applause and opened with the highly-sing-alongable “We Were Aborted.” The rest of the set included some cuts from 2009’s Ignore the Ignorant, like “Cheat on Me,” “We Share the Same Skies” and “City of Bugs”; as well as some older hits like “Hey Scenesters,” “Men’s Needs,” and a unexpected version of “Be Safe” with a giant pull-down screen of Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth fame reciting the backing monologue for the track. I especially liked that one and “Hari Kari,” highlighting how complex yet easy the songs are.
At this point, I noticed the 40-something-year-old guy standing next to me, mouthing along to all the words, dancing all twitchy-like.
In terms of cohesiveness, The Cribs show truly how a band consisting of brothers works. They all live in different places – Manchester and Yorkshire, UK, and Portland, OR. And honestly the only thing that would cue that twins Ryan and Gary live in different cities, different countries really, is the complete contrasting personal style. Gary sported a sweater and a sideswept ‘do and Ryan was rocking a black leather jacket and harsh fringe bangs. And they all meshed together to create a sound worth listening to for hours, and a truly English one at that. I heard in an interview that what brought the Jarmans together with Marr as a band in the first place was that they all “got on as friends.” That’s it – the original Cribs’ superb songwriting mixed with Marr’s seasoned and sexy guitar riffs – it’s what makes them great. The Cribs use such a simple formula, but with high-quality ingredients.
Ignore The Ignorant was on my list of the top 20 albums of last year, and rightfully so. I mean, The Cribs were already a great band, but back in 2008 when Marr joined the band full-time, they became even greater – in their sound and their fan base.
As I left, I forgot to find the teens I spoke with while waiting in line to ask them how they liked the show and to tell them to look up our site in the next couple days, but that was alright. They had to like the show. How could they not?
