On Friday night, I had the chance to catch one of my favorite bands Tapes 'n Tapes play for the first time since seeing them open up for The Streets, in Minneapolis, back in 04’. They played at The Independent in between sets from The Chain Gang of 1974 and the Berlin based indie rock band Art Brut (above).

First up, we had The Chain Gang of 1974 kicking off the rock sandwich. Their sound was much greater than the number of fans in attendance as they dove straight into their beat-driven song “Stop” off of Wayward Fire. Throughout their set the crowd for Tapes n’ Tapes and Art Brut slowly trickled onto the dance floor. They continued to kill their set by playing “Devil is a Lady”, “Undercover” and then closed out their short set with “Hold On”.

Tapes ‘n Tapes were up next as they announced that they were the meat in the rock sandwich. The venue was now packed as they started off with a funky guitar riff leading into the anthem “Hang Them All”. The band displayed a lot of emotion as they made their way through songs from The Loon and their more recently released album Outside. As the title of the song says, during the song “Freak Out” the crowd began to freak out as some members started throwing articles of clothing into the air. This was a very solid set that was closed out with their powerful song “Insistor”.

The final piece to the rock sandwich was Art Brut. They took the stage and grabbed our attention immediately by rocking out “Formed a Band”. One of the highlights of this set was front man Eddie Argos telling us stories as his band softly played in the background. Next they played “Axl Rose” off of their album Brilliant! Tragic, which was released earlier this year. During “My Little Brother”, Argos took a break to talk about how his little brother is in fact 29, a teacher and nowhere near being out of control. Following this story, the advice we were given was to never write a song with someone’s age in the lyrics.

Throughout this fun set that had Argos jumping and giving flying kicks, they played a lot of songs from their recent release including “I’m the Psychic”,  “Unprofessional Wrestling” and “Lost Weekend”.  To close the set they played their hit “Good Weekend” and Eddie Argos told us all that we must form bands once we get home.

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Catch them live at one of their upcoming shows:

Stay connected with Art Brut on Facebook and Twitter

Catch them live:

09/09/11 at Atomic Café in Munich
09/10/11 at Conne Island in Leipzig
09/11/11 at E-Werk Club in Erlangen
09/12/11 at Schoken in Stuttgart
09/13/11 at Kulturfabrik in Krefeld
09/14/11 at Kleine Freiheit in Osnabruck

All photos (c) Dan Cordie