Miike Snow
Antone’s, June 8Miike Snow’s eponymous 2009 debut was well-mannered enough, Swedish electro-pop with a rave heartbeat. Nothing offensive or edgy, just stuff kids can dance to. Live, and bumped up from a trio to a sixpiece, that sound turned into something a bit different. You can hear why their songs are appealing to the 18-24 demographic: uptempo, anthemic, perfect for scripted teen reality-dramas on MTV. That television tie-in earned the group a sold-out Antone’s, where, three songs in, the white masks the group wore came off. Singer Andrew Wyatt slung on a guitar. Girls screamed. With his tinted glasses, black satin shirt, silver medallion, and mop of dark hair, he looked like Gary Oldman in Dracula. The rest of the band followed suit and resembled the Bad Seeds in all black. Although a subterranean gothic mist definitely covered “Plastic Jungle,” Miike Snow’s songs are a bit less primitive than Cave’s, aided largely by production duo Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, aka Bloodshy & Avant, who notably won a Grammy for Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” They made quick work on their instruments, Karlsson front and center on electronic drums, plus assorted spinning and twiddling of knobs. The clean lines and loopy beats polished ballad “Silvia” and “Sans Soleil,” on which Wyatt channeled Prince behind the keys, and fist-pumped the laser-assisted “Animal” and “Burial.” By the end of the hour set, it was hard to tell what was a fog machine and what was possibly a cloud of lusty summer sweat and body spray hanging over the stage.
This article appears in June 11 • 2010.