I love the window at Brighton Music Hall. It has to be my favorite thing about the venue in that you never know what you’ll see peak out from the hidden hideaway of the artists performing there. On Tuesday night, health I saw a lot of gold; gold tinged clothing, look gold capes, gold jewels… gold.
With noisy band The Monsieurs and psychedelic rock Hellshovel starting the night off, the headlining band was bound to rock, but King Khan and the Shrines are in a league of their own. Releasing their first album in six years, The Shrines are an indescribable genre of music. Is it punk? Is it funk? Is it soul? Is it rock? It’s all of the above even when it doesn’t seem possible to mix the aggression of early punk music and smooth emotional soul music, but King Khan does it and does it well.
From the moment King Khan & the Shrines steps on stage I am floored in every aspect. But the first thing to come to mind is… the Capes man… the fucking capes. The entire band comes out wearing black clothing embellished with studs and gold jewels and capes that on any other band would look ridiculous. I mean, this isn’t 2000, they aren’t NSYNC, but in true King Khan form, the mix of contemporary, costume, synchronicity and deviation in the performance fit like a glove. I have never seen such a natural performance where none of the movements, costumes or songs feel acted out, or part of a performance, but instead it feels like these guys were born to do this.
A lot of times records and live shows don’t necessarily sound the same. The same can be said for King Khan in that the record, Idle No More, really emphasizes the soul side of the band, but the live show makes sure you know Khan and the Shrine’s roots are firmly in garage punk. If you’ve never heard of King Khan, you are missing out so hard! It takes a serious amount of talent to be able to be nostalgic, reminiscent of James Brown soul and complete with growls and horns, but feel completely contemporary and unlike anything you’ve ever heard. It takes even more creativity to then balance that soul with raspy punk-infused vocals and a band that has illegal amounts of energy while playing from inside the crowd, hanging from ceiling beams, and has a keyboardist that loves lifting his deck in the air like it’s the Stanley cup (seriously… like twirling it around above his head three separate times during the set, once almost knocking out the entire horn section).
The set was filled with great joy and dancing as well as ballads and dedications to fallen friends of Khan’s such as Jay Reatard and Lou Reed. In true and expected King Khan fashion, the night finished with an encore punctuated with grit and soul, and solos filled with reverb and horns, by god the horns. And then there’s of course King Khan’s attire in which he exchanged his metallic suit for something a little less formal: jeweled short-short spandex, a Cleopatra blue colored wig with attached crown, and of course, a fuckin’ cape.