I find that the “X All The Y” meme sums up Fang Island pretty well. Indulge me.Fist: Aloft, mid-pump, in triumph. Fang Island’s music, if anything, is triumphant, and makes you want to punch the air above you in the face.Mouth: Gaping, yelling a melody, or “yellody,” if you will. The mouth also has many, many teeth. And fangs are a type of teeth. Arguably the best type of teeth.Eyes: Crazy, non-binocular and located on the sides of the head, much like many tropical birds known to inhabit islands.
Advertisement
Guitars: All of them. Fang Island plays all the guitars.
Friday night at Bowery Ballroom, Fang Island released their new album, Major, while playing all the guitars. The music must have been laced or bewitched with some sort of auditory-response mechanism, because everyone seemed to lose control of their limbs and start shredding air guitars, as if the band was summoning the ghosts of dead rock star’s guitars and we were being possessed by the ghost guitars. I myself had to re-string my ghost guitar like three times, and that was spooky. As an album, if I had to give Major a rank, I would promote it to General.
For the last song of the night, they brought out the guitar player from Delicate Steve, which made a total of FIVE guitar players on stage at once, along with a bass player and drummer, and probably the spirit of Beethoven playing a steam-powered harpsichord-keytar. Yeah, I know Beethoven and steam power are an anachronism, but does anything else in this article make a shred of sense? No.
I managed to get the birds-eye view in the limited space on Bowery’s balcony. Standing up there, I was sort of afraid of two things. One, that I might get assassinated by a washed-up actor (that’s a Lincoln joke), and two, that being above the wall of sound coming off the stage, I might not get the same face-melting experience that I would get being in GenPop with the rest of the crowd on the floor. But when I went to the bathroom after the show and looked in the mirror, this is what I looked like.
Advertisement
I scooped up the bits of goo and teeth that melted off my face, stuck them into the back pocket of my jeans, and went straight home to listen to Major again. You can stream three of the tracks on the band’s website.Right as we were leaving, there was a construction crew really jackhammering the shit out of the sidewalk, which, most of the time, would make you want to cover your ears, roll into a ball, and rock back and forth, but we were on such a face-melting ghost-guitar high that it actually made us want to ROCK back and forth. I got this picture of my friend Skyler fist pumping to the beat of the power tool on the concrete, which coincidentally looks shockingly like the “X All The Y” guy.
ORIGINAL REPORTING ON EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS IN YOUR INBOX.
By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.