Los Angeles – At a pizza joint Friday night on the Sunset Strip, The Last Internationale (a New York band comprised of Delila Paz, Edgey and Fernando Silva) told BestNewBands.com that the discovery of Woody Guthrie and Howlin’ Wolf six years ago “became [their] religion.”  After their Viper Room set two hours later, it became clear that this band is the next religion.  We’re just among the first to figure it out.

But L.A. Reid knows it. The chairman/CEO of Epic Records signed them personally to the label. And Tom Morello and Brendan Benson know it, too.  Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave) will executive produce the band’s debut album, for which they head to Nashville on Oct 1st.  He told Rolling Stone the band is a “raw and real” combination of “East Village rock sensibilities with Battleship Potemkin firepower.”  Benson (The Raconteurs) will be producing. TLI’s latest EP, “New York, I Do Mind Dying, was released in January and is comprised of mostly covers.

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of night and think…Holy s**t, I’m making a real record,” guitarist Edgey says of his excitement at working with Morello and Benson.

The attention is well deserved.  TLI is an absolute breath of fresh air, even if they are playing a form of rock that’s as old as the genre.  No computers.  No electronica.  Nothing but blues, folk, guitar, killer drums and the vocals of a rock angel.  Compared to The White Stripes, they have a similar sound, style, dynamic and feel—but their rock is all their own.  And they definitely own it.

Edgey and Delila (vocals/guitar) make up the core of the four-year-old band.  Fernando came along two years ago when they were in Portugal and needing a drummer.  His two-show stint ended up being a full-time gig in the self-professed “radical” folk band—radical, not political.  Despite releasing songs called “Workers of the World Unite!” and “The Ballad of Trayvon Martin,” TLI makes a distinction between the two descriptors.

“Radical’ simply means…to go to the root of the problem,” Edgey says.  “We’re socially responsible.  We see something that’s wrong and we speak up for it… We don’t use the band as a platform.”

The band is—black.  In attire mostly, and hair.  Delila’s hair is solidly a part of the act.  The aptly named lead singer and front-woman for TLI, she throws it perfectly in time with her emphasis on vocals and the movement of her hips.  And she’s sexy.  There’s no denying it.  She is beautiful to watch.  Visually she’s somewhere between Joan Jett and Blondie, and vocally Janis Joplin and Joan Baez.  And she’s a stunning performer.  Dynamic, delicate, powerful, feminine, terrorizing, intense, edgy, poetic, all at once.  She wears her guitar more easily and comfortably than a handbag, and the way she moves with it… The girl can move.

Edgey, on the other hand, is definitely the power-force behind the band. His presence is very New York and so is his voice.  He’s imposing and street and yet understated. His Jim Morrison black hair covers just slightly his eyes and parts of his face so you feel like you can never fully see him, but you want to, because he is so interesting, so multifaceted and with so much to say.

His skill is unbelievable.  There were several moments throughout their set when he would come to the front of the stage and bang away guitar solos – smooth, gyrating, electric, psych numbers.  It was reminiscent of another era.  The ‘60s, maybe.  Most of the show felt like a window in time to what our parents had watched.  But it’s his mind that really makes him.  Intelligent, well versed on a variety of topics and with the ability to communicate powerfully on very delicate subjects, he has a command and a bluntness that is refreshing.

Drummer Fernando, who himself looks like Bob Dylan—tallish, wiry, remote, with curly brown hair that sticks up everywhere—his arrival marked a transition for TLI.  “The band was really re-born,” Edgey says.  “That’s when we really tightened up as musicians.”  Sweet, and more quiet than the other two, “he won’t say anything,” Delila warned before the interview had started.

Watching the three perform: It felt like witnessing history.

Their set began with “Moanin’ at Midnight,” a Howlin’ Wolf cover, and went on to include “Killing Fields,” a female-version of Elmore James’ “Mean Mistreatin’ Mama,” folk classic “House of the Rising Sun,” the brilliantly catchy “Wanted Man” (unfortunately impossible to find/buy on the internet), “Gypsy Woman” and their finale, “Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Indian Blood.”

From first moment to last, it was an experience.  Their sound is infectious, playful, sexy, groovy, heavily improvised and decidedly rock.  Songs that should have lasted a few minutes lasted several, and felt very personal to the band.  Even the covers felt like theirs.  They communicate with each other on stage and at the same time perform in their own vacuum of feeling and emotion, in their own world.

Lights flushed down from behind, framing their black visages with poetry.  Delila, when she wasn’t eyeing her guitar or shaking her black mane, stared intensely and unwaveringly out into the audience.  And said hair stuck to her face from sweat like black rivers, her cheekbones shining blue in the light.

Before their last number, Edgey shook out an Amstel Light on the stage and then, while playing, climbed onto the bass drum, which sighed a little under his black boots. Suspended like some secular angel in the background above Delila, he stood there for several minutes while the audience jumped and scrambled to take pictures. The final song turned into an improv showdown between Delila and Edgey on their guitars.  Both at separate moments climbed off the stage to play from the audience, who grabbed at them lovingly and took pictures.  

It was like witnessing a birth.  Maybe to the new self, the one that came from watching this show.  This superbly talented act brings back rock ideals that feel almost nonexistent in the current market, and it is a welcome relief.  They are sure to be a dynamic presence and force of change on the world stage.  

Look for The Last Internationale’s full interview, coming out this week on BestNewBands.com.

Photos By Katie Booth