Les Savy Fav, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas

Headliners at ATP always have a lot to live up to by the end of the night. Les Savy Fav could have shot themselves in the foot by curating a bill that also featured acts known for their blistering live shows. We’re talking the trash talkin’ Marnie Stern, Pixies-nostalgists Surfer Blood, noisy lo-fi twopiece No Age who make enough of a ruckus for a full ensemble, and the radio-unfriendly (for certain reasons) Holy Fuck.

But in actual fact, it’s Les Savy Fav who lump a heart attack’s worth of pressure on themselves by playing earlier on in the day - opening the Butlins weekender with a toned-down show at the more intimate Red’s bar. Although, when it comes to frontman Tim Harrington it’s never going to be a quiet or uneventful affair; this evening he’s wearing a glittery shirt-come-cape (you’ll find out later that he rather likes glitter…). The place fills up with every arriving punter putting a coat on and heading straight to the bar. If there’s anyone who’s going to shake off the wintry shivers and end-of-week lethargy then it’s definitely going to be this NY troupe.

Such is Harrington’s stage presence, or sometimes lack of presence on the stage, that most of the crowd have their eyes focused solely on the audience, where the frontman normally wanders. Highlights of this early show include the singer drinking the contents of a kettle before proceeding to transfer it to mouth of an eager female fan via the medium of a kiss, pouring water across the stage causing a hazardous slip-slide that he continues to glide across to the dismay of the orange-clad security guards mere steps away. After roaming the entire jaunt of the venue looking for things to climb upon, swing from or use as a crude prop. As the 45 minute warm-up (boy, are we all pretty toasty by the end of it), the band remove the drum kit piece-by-piece from the drummer while he plays regardless and you start to wonder how they’re going to top this later on.

But fast-forward a few hours, and a hella load of beers consumed in the meantime, and both the band and audience are in a greater mood to party. The normally-exhibitionists start their headline billing coyly with a curtain drawn during soundcheck, and the reason for this becomes vastly apparent when it swings open to reveal a silver-clad stage with Harrington dressed in what can only be described as a sparkling gimp costume. If glitter isn’t your thing then too bad, because glistering balloons litter the stage to be released later, and a girl is on hand at the side to blow bags full of glitter into the audience throughout. Les Savy Fav are a band who could be criticised for their live show treating the actual music as secondary, but this is indeed a live review and on a gig playing field, they are matched by only The Flaming Lips.

And you know how at isolated environments such as festivals there is an increased prevalence for totally fabricated rumours. Well the one Friday night, rolling over into the early hours of Saturday morning, was that this show would be Les Savy Fav’s last. It probably isn’t, but if it just so happens to be then there won’t be too many people complaining - at least amongst the ATP clientele.