“Fuck, yeah, we’re garish!” Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! singer Neil Fridd shouted on the phone, from somewhere in Minnesota.
If nothing else, the man’s concise. “There are a million bands I can go see. We’re gonna do the opposite of that,” he said. “It’s only garish because there’s a ton of really boring bands.”
“Overt” and “absurd” also come to mind when trying to describe his act, whose inside-joke-stuffed LP, “thank you!,” came out last spring, about a year after its 2010 debut, “I Love You! I Love You! I Love You and I’m in Love with You! Have an Awesome Day! Have the Best Day of Your Life!” The lurid art accompanying its albums and websites suggests that a 14-year-old in the late ’90s designed it using GeoCities, and there are about eight more musicians contributing to any given song than necessary.
So why should anyone see the group Thursday night at Kamp’s? Because Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! is the sonic equivalent of enthusiasm. Its songs bounce with catchy piano melodies and pulsing dance beats that are very different from Fridd’s initial aims for making music.
“I wanted to make music like DJ Shadow,” he said.
His easily accessible, irresistibly charming and terrifically offbeat songs work hard to make listeners feel better.
“We feel very kindred to a lot of bands that have a super-high energy and participatory shows,” Fridd said.
In
that sense, Terror Pigeon is not unlike our own Flaming Lips, often
blurring the lines between band and audience by way of ridiculous
costumes, mid-show games, body paint and who knows what else.
Signed
to David Byrne’s eclectic world-pop record label, Luaka Bop, Fridd said
he has yet to meet the legendary former Talking Heads leader.
“I
stood him up at a duck dinner once,” Fridd said. “It was a going-away
party for this lady named Tara, and I showed up really late. They were
like, ‘Sorry, dude. David left already.’” Nonetheless, Fridd said it was
an honor to be on Byrne’s label.
“I
almost feel like not elaborating, cause — duh — it rules,” he said.
“They encourage me to make the best possible music I can make.”
Photo by Michael Pugliese
