The one problem with having Divine Fits open (a show, a night, a set, whatever) is that everything that follows is good, but it's not Divine Fits. I say this both as the person who heard the indie rock band's single months back (way before debut album, A Thing Called Divine Fits, was released) and immediately started scheming how to see them/interview them/meet them -- and as a person who did meet the band in person, six hours before their live set at the U.S. Cellular Center, and was a little bit let down.
The reason for the above full disclosure is because there's a difference between going to see a band you like to dance to, and going to see a band you've been obsessing over for months. The bands that get us in the gut and in the mind, the bands who write the songs we feel on a molecular level, the band whose songs we'd put on mix tapes were we still 17 and making mix tapes -- those bands are less like 90 minutes of entertainment and more like a serious, committed relationship.
So getting to meet the Divine Fits guys at a Moog Sound Lab was awesome (to see their process, to realize that Britt Daniel is really tall and Dan Boeckner wears really cool boots, to watch Britt figure out a Moog guitar and Sam Brown translate a drum kit to a percussion controller) and lame (I was like, "I interviewed you over the phone and I really wanted to say hi!" and Dan was like, "Well, hi." End of story.). It was anticlimactic enough that I wondered if I could watch them perform and still feel the same breathless thrill at the songs from A Thing that I've been feeling for the last several months.
The quick answer: Yes. From the first notes. This is a band that's meant to be on stage. Any grumpiness/road-weariness/hung-over-ness (just guessing here) that I perceived earlier in the day was completely gone. They were on fire.
Britt and Dan traded off lead vocals and lead guitar duties on stage; Britt sang first on the slow-building "Neapolitans" and then Dan took his turn on the itchy, urgent "Baby Gets Worse." While Britt is probably the bigger star of the two, he was actually somewhat overshadowed by Dan's stage presence -- Dan who moves in tight jerks and unselfconscious struts. He's all sharp angles and shadows, the contours of his face recalling, at times, a young Nick Cave.
Both Britt and Dan sing with a roughness at the edges of their voices. Their vocals have separate moods and nuances, but they're close enough to blend in sound and theme as they worked through the tracks of their album (along with covers of Frank Ocean's "Lost" and Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky"). Lyrically, Britt's songs (the tight, jittery "Flaggin A Ride," the skulking, "Would That Not Be Nice") are more complex; Dan's (the static-y, haunted dance number,"My Love Is Real) are more emotional. His is the stuff of broken heartedness, of deep wounds set to fantastic hooks and driving beats.
But for all that intensity, all that coiled energy and gorgeously raw edges, there was also playfulness throughout the show. Dan and Britt talked about the Halloween costumes on the floor, they traded solos and seemed to push each other to guitar flourishes, and vocal oneupmanship.
And the band as a whole, now more than a month into its tour, proved to be a polished machine. They look at each other like a group boys who've just found their way onto arena stages for the first time; they play like seasoned pros. Really, both are true. Divine Fits is made up of musicians who've been at this for awhile (20 years in Britt's case), but as this band, they're newcomers. The excitement is as palpable as those rock hooks and those raged vocals. And, at the culmination of "Shivers," when both Britt and Dan did that rock star leap to end the final note, it didn't come off like going through the motions.
It was a completely authentic.
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