These New Puritans w/ El Jesus de Magico, Wexner Center

There have been quite a few good shows around town recently, so maybe that explains why the Wexner Center was so empty for These New Puritans on Friday. Whatever the reason, those who were absent missed a brief but exhilarating performance.

These New Puritans are all the buzz in the UK, taking post-punk cues from likely sources such as the Fall and Gang of Four. With bands like Bloc Party cropping up all over the place the past few years, it seems like the whole post-punk revival thing has been done to death. But these youngsters draw on their influences while managing to sound fresh as ever.

Musically, TNP (or TNPS, as they’re sometimes called) were all about the beat. Singer Jack Barnett’s twin brother George kept the pounding rhythm with a huge bass and floor tom sound, spanking those skins as hard as he could while keeping perfect time. Jack’s vocal delivery was equally rhythmic, delivered in quick, emphatic cadences. In “Swords of Truth” he sang, “This music is weightless,” but it felt as bottom-heavy as ever.

The vocalist also performed in some sort of chain-mail outfit, which made him look pretty silly--like a cross between a small bird and an underfed, teenage Julius Caesar. To complicate matters, Barnett assumed something akin to a hip-hop persona, gesturing wildly with his hands and constantly reminding the audience of his band’s name and the current year.

But the rhythmic nature of the vocals actually wasn’t too far removed from rap. Barnett would often put his guitar aside to slam the words down your throat without distraction. And how odd those words were, waxing philosophical on the meaning of numbers in “Numbers,” and doing the same for colors in “Colours.” On “Elvis” he revealed his paranoia: “We’re being watched by experts, and what will happen next, we hold the clues.” Honestly, the stuff is cryptic to the point that I can’t tell if it holds weight or if it’s a bunch of faux-intelligent college-freshman observations, but it worked well with the music nonetheless.

Just a couple complaints: The bassist needs to stick to bass and stay away from vocals; Barnett does it best. But at least he was obviously into the music, whereas the woman at the Macbook, while easy on the eyes, barely moved and had a permanent look of boredom and gloom on her face. If you can’t muster up the energy to move to those beats, it’s time to man your computer from the sound table.

Opener El Jesus de Magico has become a big name in Columbus in the last year or two, second only to Times New Viking and the rest of the shitgaze trifecta (Psychedelic Horseshit, Pink Reason). El Jesus’s sound is really just a stone’s throw away from that crew, but I must have been absent when they passed the El Jesus Kool-Aid around. To my ears, everything El Jesus does the aforementioned Columbus bands do better. TNV has better pop hooks, Horseshit’s experiments with noise are more interesting, and Pink Reason’s use of heavy reverb and delay come off as a stylistic preference instead of a crutch. On Friday, singer Jon Witzky’s ultra-spaced-out vocals were delayed past the point of art-rock and into the comic realm. Trying to discern a single word, even when Witzky spoke in between songs with no other instruments playing, was utterly pointless.

To be fair, I didn’t mind the band’s Funeral Home Session seven-inch, and drummer Michael O’Shaughnessy (of the funeral home family) is entertaining to watch live. The band also had a few things going against it on Friday. The somewhat intimate performance space felt cavernous with only 30 or so people in the room--the smallest crowd I’ve ever seen in that space--but the same crowd in a smaller dive bar probably would have created more energy. Plus, the volume was up so loud that all the instruments combined to make a giant ear-bleeding noise. I know, it sounds like a whiny rock critic thing to say. Rock shows are supposed to be loud. But this was in the painfully loud category where it takes away from the enjoyment rather than adding to it.

I can respect a band for creating a distinct, consistent sound and aesthetic--one the band obviously believes in. It just didn’t make a believer out of me.

mp3: These New Puritans - Numerology AKA Numbers