The Mill Restaurant
March 31, 2006
By Sean Moeller

There we all were last Friday night, thinking and knowing that this was the last time – on the night of its first visit to our city – that we’d ever be this close to Minneapolis buzz saws Tapes ‘N Tapes again. It’s a funny thing to think about a friend you’ve never met, but we were really going to miss this intimacy. Tucked in between the booths of this Italian food parlor and mid-sized bar, the boys, who have been waging a holy moly war with inconspicuousness, since last month’s South By Southwest Music Festival (a week during which every writer covering the thing wrote lauditory remarks about them and the New York Times wrote a glorifying feature story about them), were just a quartet of dudes in T-shirts out to knock all of us the fuck out. Whether or not lead singer Josh Grier, bassist Shawn Neary, keyboardist Matt Kretzmann and pipsqueak drummer Jeremy Hanson felt the need to validate all the hype that’s been affixed to their band in the past two months, they made this 45-minute set a boiler regardless.

Everything off of their latest record, “The Loon,” was played like they were working for their dinner. And they wanted sirloin. Thirty ounces of the finest meat. They wanted five courses and they wanted appetizers that they could get drunk off of. “Just Drums” came out like a backdraft, sending out shrapnel like a dirty bomb. Grier, looking like Vincent Gallo at the front of the stage, was hailing through his lyrics, Neary was jittery and wild and Hanson was smashing on his kit as if he was trying to shatter the bones of everyone in the room, reducing them to quivering piles of happy customers. This was what a fever looks like. It really is. Grier borrowed a swig of beer from a fan standing in the front row. That’s the last time that will ever happen. We could still feel their breaths on our faces. But this was the end of all that.

They proved they were worthwhile in the way that every one of the four played and sang as if they were gathering themselves up to bang their heads into concrete walls, knowing well and good that there was going to be a searing pain coming, that they might lose consciousness, hearing, an eye and yet they did it anyway. The live show – the way it’s okay for Grier (as if he was Will Smith circa his “Miami” period) to invite people to “get jiggy with” the “dance song” in the set – is appreciated only in-person, enhancing the jumpy and Animals-esque delivery of the recorded versions on “The Loon.” The music business is a screwy one, but if there’s justice in it, a greater power than any of us critics will strike down Rock Kills Kid and the She Wants Revenge before they can do any more damage and allow Tapes ‘N Tapes to slaughter us in peace.