daiana feuer

One must personally invest in subject matter. In the case of Monotonix, that dedication involves a smush of bodies holding each other by the waist with one hand and passing around people in the air with the other. Perhaps that involves your own body, whether you asked for it or not, rising seven feet in the air on drunk people’s fingertips. The Monotonix threesome is the hairiest, sweatiest 3-headed creature since mythological times. There’s a blues-riffing guitar and a rousing drumbeat, but the physicality of the band’s performance overshadows everything else. The look in singer Levi “Ha Haziz” Elvis’s eyes, wide open and peering about, is louder than the English and/or Hebrew words he’s growling into the microphone. Anavan’s Aaron Buckley took on the role of making sure the mic, as well as the guitar and drum being tossed around Spaceland, remained plugged in. He appeared delighted with the responsibility—as focused as a hyena. Earlier, Anavan opened the evening’s events by delivering that warm, gushy tootsie-pop three licks below its hard-candy shell. The Mae Shi played next, pep-rally shouting in unison while the audience played under the band’s signature parachute tarp—we all miss kindergarten, don’t deny it. Tonight’s lineup combined effectively to unwind any gripes dragged in, draining the mind of all bullshit. The room reeked of camaraderie and armpits by the time “Ha Aziz” turned his underwear into a thong.

“My body language says I am not afraid.” — Monotonix

—Daiana Feuer

daiana feuer