You Hear That Deafening Silence

Maxi Geil & Playcolt @ Tonic 10/14/2006
Crying / Teenage XXXtreme / Strange Sensation / Sunday Morning / That’s How The Story Goes / Your Best Won’t Be Enough / You Can’t Kill Us Man, We’re Already Dead / Artist’s Lament / The Love I Lose / Making Love in the Sunshine

Maxi Geil & Playcolt “You Can’t Kill Us Man, We’re Already Dead” – In spite of some technical difficulties and a few awkward false starts, Maxi Geil & Playcolt still managed to put on a strong show this weekend at Tonic. It’s best that they got the bad luck out of their way now, since they are about to go off and play some key British dates in November to kick off the release of their second pass at a debut album. Though A Message To My Audience and the new Strange Sensation share a number of songs (including, obviously, the latter’s title track), there’s a difference in tone and lyrical emphasis. Whereas Message kept its mind set on the relationship of an artist with his audience and the complex and often innoble motivations that people have for creating art, Strange Sensation steps outside of that context for songs about sex and politics that do not rely on the Maxi Geil character.

Every previously released song on the album (which includes all of the songs listed above, plus “Please Remember Me” and a cover of Henry Purcell’s “Cold Genius”) is re-recorded, and in most cases it’s for the better. “That’s How The Story Goes” is the most obviously improved, and the key ballads from Message have more of an epic sweep. I’m not sure how I feel about them excising the first minute of “Please Remember Me,” though — I’ve known that song for over two years now and listening to this version is a bit like running into an old friend who has just had some radical plastic surgery.

Of the new songs, “You Can’t Kill Us Man, We’re Already Dead” is the most immediate and accessable, and most indicative of the change in lyrical tone on the more recent compositions. There would be no easy way to do this song about the slow death of leftism in American political culture within the strict confines of the debased and self-obsessed Maxi persona, though it works very well within the character of the band with its particular blend of ironic humor and earnest bombast. (Click here for my 2004 interview with Guy Richards Smit aka Maxi Geil, and here for the Maxi Geil & Playcolt website.)

Elsewhere: There’s a fantastic, sharp post about the Killers guy dissing Green Day over here on the great and underrated No Rock N’ Roll Fun.