Les Savy Francisco

So I was sitting in my motel room in Canada (yep, I'm taking a long route to SxSW in Austin from Australia) and, like everyone else in North America, I've been watching Jimmy Fallon stumble through his first week hosting Late Night - luckily he has recruited The Roots as his house band coz that makes it worth returning for). Anyway, after Late Show on came Last Call With Carson Daly where he spent a half-hour showcasing the Noise Pop Festival in San Francisco - hailing crap hoppers NASA as the festival highlight. Bah - just coz NASA are well-connected and can pull MIA and Tom Waits onto their debut recording doesn't make them good, let alone the highlight of the festival. It just so happened that I stumbled onto the festival last weekend and there is no doubt that alt.punkers Les Savy Fav playing at the Mezzanine were the highlight. Not only did the singer get up to all his usual ADD antics (taping himself to an audience member, surfing an armchair down steps, etc) - pictured above balancing off a banister right above my head - but their songs have matured into adventurous melodic shakedowns that are odds with the screaming vocals as often as they are perfectly placed. Pffft - compared to that NASA are just two boffins being boring behind some dinky toys.