Live Review: Tangiers, North Star Bar, Philadelphia PA, 12/13/05

by dave heaton

Three years in a row now, Tangiers has released an album that stood as one my favorite rock and roll releases of the year. Each of their three albums offers all the pure pleasures of the best rock music - power, passion, volume - while giving voice to complicated feelings and projecting an atmosphere of both mystery.

Tangiers synthesizes various styles of rock into one brew: the anthemic energy of the Who, the free rolling feeling of Chuck Berry and his contemporaries, punk anger, crisp post-punk guitars, the theatrical leanings of Echo & the Bunnymen. Live, the band gives all of those impressions at once, forming a powerful equation built off rock success of the past, while at the same time presenting their own songs with ferocity and velocity.

The North Star Bar is one of Philadelphia's most comfortable venues for live music; somehow I feel instantly at home there. On Monday night Tangiers played first on a line-up of three, to a crowd that was receptive if not yet as full or enthusiastic as they would not doubt end up being for the headliner, Pretty Girls Make Graves. Other plans kept me from sticking around to see that group or new Matador act The Double, so I instead just got a snapshot of the overall concert. But the third that I witnessed was a fantastic start, one which gave the audience a grand taste of Tangiers' talent.

Drawing mostly from their latest album The Family Myth, Tangiers played a no-nonsense set which at times sounded even more vital (if that's possible) than their already powerful albums. Their sound live is a bit looser, with guitarist Josh Reichmann blazing away freely on his instrument. But they also sound as tight and together as a rock band can, with drummer Jon McCann letting loose his inner Keith Moon (even more skillfully than he did during his short tenure once upon a time with Guided by Voices, my last live exposure to his talent). Reichmann and bassist James Sayce, the two core members of the group, trade off vocals on nearly every song. The latter has a warm, smoothly melodic voice while the former's voice is a bit more dramatic and ragged - together they compliment each other so well, representing the varied styles that fit within one umbrella in Tangiers' music.

Tangiers finished their 30-or-so-minute set with the appropriately dyanmic "Ro Ro Roland", from their second album Never Bring You Pleasure. It's a rock anthem to beat all rock anthems, with an amazing hook. It left me dizzy and happy, looking forward to my next listen to their albums and hoping that at least some of the young music fans in attendance were as awed as I was, and that they paid attention the multiple times that Sayce said, between songs, "We're Tangiers, from Ontario."