Some volume issues during a performance on screen render the crowd restless. Murmurs ripple through, speculating and questioning.
“Can’t hear a fucking thing!” cuts through the darkness, crass and unconstructive.
“Well, you should’ve been there!” retorts another faceless voice, more lighthearted. By the end of the film, he couldn’t have been more right.
Watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you?
By Chris Ziegler
Photograph by Dan Monick
Moral Support by Charlie Rose
Downtown L.A. was post-nuclear when The Smell first moved in a decade ago, but now it’s all neon. There’s a dog groomer, a gourmet pizzeria and a velvet-rope nightclub just around the corner from The Smell’s alley
