Les Savy Fav leads the white-kid congregation in Chicago

January 31, 2009, at Epiphany Episcopal Church

By Nicholas Jackson
Published: February 2nd, 2009 | 4:00pm

It’s about 9 p.m. on a Saturday and I’m in church. Tim Harrington and the rest of his New York–based rock quintet, Les Savy Fav, took the stage in front of a whole litany of religious figures. Harrington, dressed in some modern interpretation of a cassock, dropped to his knees, hands clasped and pointing towards the ceiling that is buttressed high above him and started to pray.

The crowd went wild and would have burned the church to the ground if he told them to do so. Harrington is their god and, after more than a decade of writing and touring, a major figure in the post-punk music scene. Through the years, the sound of Les Savy Fav has become decidedly more mainstream — now, every once in a while, you might even hear the band being played on the radio. Before, this was virtually impossible. It’s something to note, though, because it was obvious in the crowd that night; Les Savy Fav, which began as a collective of college friends, has kept its core group of fans from the beginning and picked up a whole bunch of new ones along the way. Indeed, the performance was sold out.

The Epiphany Episcopal Church sits on the corner of Ashland Avenue and Adams Street, a “community of faith” that not only serves as a house of worship but also plays host to events like the one happening on January 31. The pews are pushed up against the walls and two makeshift beer tables are set up in the back. As opening act the Jai Alai Savant, played through its standard set, the beer line snaked across the room. Everyone was warming up for the main act. “This place is fucking awesome,” said the girl in front of me in line to the guy she was with. That’s as true a statement as any; many accepted definitions hold.

It was the perfect setting. Around the second or third song, Harrington always jumps into the crowd (this time it was the second, and he made it halfway in), he always lifts his T-shirt up over his head and loses various pieces of clothing as the concert goes on; he is predictable in his unpredictability and that’s what everyone loves. At a Les Savy Fav concert, one is always filled with the sense that the entire room is on the verge of chaos, but it never comes. Inside of the cold brick walls of the Epiphany Church, on the run-down Near West side of Chicago where ER is filmed and minorities comprise approximately 75 percent of the population, that feeling was more palpable than ever.

The crowd was almost completely white and everyone looked like they would make the ideal target for a bully: ironic mustaches, sweater vests, and too-skinny jeans. Later, they would leave the church in packs, shuffling from one pool of light to the next on their way to the nearest mode of transportation out of this neighborhood. But as “The Year Before the Year 2000” started to play, they flailed their arms and stomped their feet. The giant crucifix watching over the crowd took on the appearance of a mass confession. Shaking droplets of sweat off of the tips of their hair, everyone in the Epiphany Church released frustrations that had built up since they last enjoyed the a true performer who knows how to just let go.

For more photos from this show visit Venus Zine's Flickr page.
The Jai Alai Savant Flight of the Bass Delegate review