If you want the short version, here it is: Best gig of the year.
Here’s the long version:
Fight Like Apes (FLApes to their friends) have garnered a fair bit of attention over the last couple of years.
Both art-students in fluorescent trainers and the barely still-kicking Irish Times Ticket have been giving the band the glad eye. Hum-drum Phantom FM, the most boring rock station on the planet, ranked them as 31st best band of the decade. And a well-received album and turns supporting several big acts helped elevate their profile and generate a lot of hype.
Congratulations, it seems, all round. But despite producing diverting electro-punk rock-pop records that are stuffed with clever, glib lyrics, there’s the lingering feeling that FLApes are a bit flimsy, studenty and somewhat expendable.
A FLApes gig is a different beast.
In Dublin’s Academy, over the course of two shows, they conducted a master class in theatrics and pomp with anarchic enthusiasm and meticulous attention to detail. It seems almost a waste to even try and write about it.
Exploding onto the specially constructed boxing-ring stage, Buckfast in hand and dressed as 80s wrestlers (including Bret “the hitman” Hart and “rowdy” Roddy Piper among others), FLApes belted out one of the best gigs of the year — incorporating props, gimmicks, showmanship and good old-fashioned shouting and yelling.
FLApes were introduced by a ring-side announcer speaking into a lowered-from-the-ceiling microphone. A couple of real life wrestlers taunted the band before the show, and again at intervals, creating a WWE-esque storyline. At the encore the band kicked ass — the keyboard player leaped and caught a wrestler with a classic vertical press. SLAM!
From what I can gather, this is pretty much standard fare for FLApes. And doing this they’ve earned themselves a lot of dedicated fans — some of the crowd had dressed up as the same wrestlers as the band. It was all very meta and ironic.
And none of this has anything to do with the fucking music.
The precocious-in-a-good-way singer, Mary-Kate Geraghty, delivered an incendiary performance, smashing her way through the set-list with riotous aplomb; occasionally standing on the ropes of the ring, sometimes writhing on the ground. The keyboard player offered support with a similarly boisterous performance.
It was punk — all yelling and bawling and hoarse screams — but pop-punk that’s not actually angry about anything in particular. It’s sort of, ‘I just can’t get my hair to look right’ angry, rather then ‘we’re all drowning in the toxic waste of capitalist greed’ — you understand the difference.
FLApes are infectiously fun.
So confident and comfortable on stage are FLPapes, that at certain times the gig seemed to almost devolve into a jam session, which just happened to have a few hundred people at it. It all sort-of worked in a chaotically charming way.
Along with Republic of Loose and the Duckworth Lewis Method, Fight Like Apes are giving a much-needed kick in the sack to Irish singer/songwriter noodlers and dull rock trudgers like Bell X1.
You can worry and fret that in the long-term FLApes may not last after their novelty has worn off. And maybe, yes, there is an over reliance on gimmickry. But who cares.
Moral of the story: travel far to see them, and catch them while the catching’s good.
Support on the night was from three goons with a couple of decks playing tracks from the Observer’s Top 50 albums of 2009. They stood on stage dipping their knees more or less in time with the tunes. Classless.
By Brian Herron
