They Say Anything and play everything

[Kevin Bronson was listening to old Siouxsie and the Banshees records last night. There's a story there, but far more interesting are the reports filed by Buzz Bands correspondents August Brown and Frank Farrar, who were out seeing music from the young and the formally young:]

"I sing about hating this place quite a bit,” said native Angeleno and Say Anything’s enfant terrible, Max Bemis, a few songs into his band’s set Thursday night at the House of Blues. “But it’s actually not that bad, if you have friends.”

Given Bemis’ knack for Opus Dei-level self-flagellation in his lyrics, such a comment probably meant that there were spells when he didn’t. But emo isn’t just a safe harbor for spindly, wiseacre suburban outcasts anymore, and Say Anything’s set proved that the best thing to happen to the genre was for its artists to turn their internal melodrama into rock operas. Provided, of course, that they have the wit and chops to pull it off.

In keeping with emo’s eagerness to please, Bemis and Co. opened the night with their sort-of hit “Alive With The Glory of Love,” an ode to public sex in a Holocaust concentration camp. The creepiness of watching 500 teenagers nuzzle their girlfriends while singing “If they catch us and dispatch us to those separate work camps, I’ll dream about you” is seriously unnerving, but Bemis’ absolute conviction almost makes up for the song’s inherent ickiness. Almost. But the rest of the set was a whirlwind of tack-sharp Big Rock Gestures, from Coby Linder’s pummeling drums on Bemis’ poison-pen letter to himself “Every Man Has a Molly” to the three-guitar lineup that brought out the intricacies of “Real Boy’s” maniacal arrangements. Bemis isstill believes in the possibility of salvation through guitar-based rock music, and for all his self-loathing, he brings the kids together like few others even attempt to, let alone master. [-- A.B.]

Photo by Laura Kirsch

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Entomologically correct rocker Robyn Hitchcock gave fans two hours’ worth of the tasty hooks and tortuous tales they’ve come to expect at Spaceland on Thursday night. It was the penultimate show of a road trip with his current band, the Venus 3. And while this group sports three-fifths of the modern-day R.E.M. touring lineup -- Peter Buck on guitar, Scott McCaughey on bass, Bill Rieflin on drums  -- their lively but unassuming accompaniment made it clear this was Robyn’s night. Well, at least until the psychedelic explosion of Syd Barrett’s “See Emily Play,” a closing twist that devolved into a blissful decay of atmospheric feedback.

Other stops along the way, on a night that saw Hitchcock plucking specimens from all the colorful eras of his career: a dedication of “Television” (from 2004’s “Spooked” CD) to Kurt Vonnegut alter ego Kilgore Trout; “Chinese Bones” (from ’88), which he dubbed “an imaginary Roxy Music song”; and a rather reverent rendering of Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Sean Nelson (of Harvey Danger) opened the show and hung out on stage singing backups the rest of the night. So, OK, make that Venus 4. [-- F.F.]

Photo: Hitchcock and McCaughey in London, 2005, by Carina Jirsch