Everybody Was in the French Resistance … Now
Mohawk, Friday, March 19
“Does everyone know the song ‘Billie Jean’? That’s a fucked-up song.” To those who never thought about it, Eddie Argos of Everybody Was in the French Resistance … Now explained that it’s about a guy who picks up a girl in a club, knocks her up, then disavows any responsibility for the kid. So Argos, better known as the singer of Art Brut, wrote “Billie’s Genes,” a song from the standpoint of the fatherless kid, now all grown up. In fact that’s the whole musical strategem of EWITFRN: write response songs. The band actually takes the bit pretty far without degenerating into schtick. Musically, they write decent homages (their response to Elastica’s “Vaseline” is simply a shamelessly flattering Elastica rip-off), but Argos’ wry wit and genial irony has a half-life longer than a SXSW showcase allows. Plus, he’s legitimately funny. As he explained after they played “Creeque Allies” to open: “In Europe, when you open with a song about the Nazis, you get different reactions. When we were in Switzerland we sang, ‘Everyone was in the French Resistance … but you people.’ That didn’t go over too well.”
This article appears in March 26 • 2010.