I've been thinking about Radiohead a lot lately. Despite its standout single, "Creep", their first album, Pablo Honey, was mostly forgettable. They’ve grown into such giants of rock that it would be a shame if you caught them on their first world tour, if your only experience was with the younger, less-polished band. Only a gambler would have seen the muck of that first record and predicted gold.
It was with a roll of the die that I predicted great things for indie experimentalists Le Loup. Their debut album, with its impossible-to-repeat title The Throne of the Third Haven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, was widely regarded as a mess, but I found the banjo plucking, the Biblical lyrics, and the blipping electronics promising. The band threw so many ideas into the mixing boards that at least one of them had to hit. I thought they were channeling Radiohead, and went all in. On October 28, The Echo hosted the band's second stop in Los Angeles, giving me a chance to see if I had called it right or wrong.
In short: I called it wrong. I was expecting Revelation. I was expecting Thom Yorke. They produced Sam Simkoff.
Simkoff, Le Loup's newly-bearded lead singer and banjo/ keyboard player, flailed on stage clad in tie-dye and a trucker's hat. He ducked low, surveying the jamming of his bandmates with a flamboyance that must have grown annoying to them mere days into the tour. Simkoff was so dedicated to his dancing, in fact, that he sampled his banjo line on the song "Le Loup (Fear Not)" in order to free his hands for greater movement.
An odd air hung over the show. Somebody threw up next to the bar. A man started doing pushups near the back. And a woman in her mid-30s brought her scooter inside (okay, so she was wearing a cast) and rode around through the crowd. Worse of all was the material the band performed from their new album, Family. The excessive chanting and droning baselines might mean that Simkoff and Le Loup have, to steal a phrase, tuned in and dropped out. I stopped defending the band's shortcomings, folded my cards, and gave up. At least until the band's next album comes out. You never know.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine
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