Concert Review: Longwave

Longwave have every right to be jaded. Three years after joining the Strokes on tour just as Is This It? crested the hype curve, the New York five-piece is still dogged by the mixed side of that blessing, weathering inapt Casablancas comparisons at every turn (their dirty bangs and beat-up couture don’t help matters) as they play small clubs.

But when they plugged in last Thursday after midnight at TT the Bear’s Place, Longwave enthusiastically banished the specter of those prep-school Television-heads in seconds. Combining previews of their upcoming LP There’s a Fire, awaiting a May release on RCA, with a few songs from their first two albums thrown into the mix, the band showed they know how to set a room certifiably ablaze.

Longwave’s two guitars charged, swirled, and dueled their way through the night, expertly navigating hairpin shifts in dynamic. The band’s opening salvo built jangling tension that broke out into simultaneous squalls over new-wave synths, ultimately evoking an up-tempo, slightly less morose Interpol.

A few songs later, frontman Steve Schiltz closed his eyes for a surprisingly delicate falsetto while “Strawberry Fields” keyboards tweeted wistfully over skittish drums; without missing a beat, he doubled over to play a loud, bluesy fuzz riff. Longwave loves to create atmosphere and plays with it this way, painstakingly assembling moods and sending them crashing into each another within songs.

The band’s enthusiastic energy saved the often-moody material from seeming pretentious. Schiltz and his bandmates joked with each other and audience members throughout the show, almost entirely without the bored irony of their fellow New York hipsters. Six years after forming, Longwave knows how to swagger without sneering.

It’s not blindingly original music, to be sure. Some of the songs played could pass for innovative pastiches of several recent 80s-inflected rockers. But Longwave never sounded stale or tired, with melodic strength and dead-on chops that belied their eager, easygoing vibe.

Returning to the stage for a rip-roarin’ encore—one old song, one new—Schiltz grinned at the audience’s renewed applause. “You can’t get rid of us,” he drawled. If Longwave can continue to invigorate their genre with performances like Thursday’s, it’s hard not to find his warning reassuring.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.