The Skinny Tie Report: Ladytron and CSS, The Club at Firestone, Orlando, Florida

poster by Betamike

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Hitting the clubs again for a second day in a row, I feel like a beat up Michael Alig Happy Meal toy in the worst way, of course this is coming the day after. Last night was indeed amazing!
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Highly anticipated since it was their first time in Orlando, Ladytron supersized themselves from their original location of the Social to the Club at Firestone somehow having the predilection of knowing that as amazing as The Social would be to see the haughty ice queens of darktronica, it could by no means hold the one two punch of both their sprawling set-up nor their energetic opening band CSS.
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At first I was a little dismayed at the venue change but after thinking about it, Firestone has ample space and pretty nifty backdrop (an old tire factory...c'mon!) but the sheer wall of sound that even 1/2 of Ladytron could produce in a venue like The Social makes me automatically want to "What if" this thing to death. Never the less, a bigger venue also means about 1,000 more inebriated rubberneckers and Firestone Thursday regulars who either were like "WTF!!" or found themselves on the receiving end of a pretty damn good aural attack.
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Opening up for Ladytron straight out of the hype caboose like a thousand sexed up kittens scratching their way out of a neon pink and gold spandex bag was the Brazilian Cansei de Ser

Sexy (CSS) who you may have or certainly have already been rocking out to with their "Let's Make Love to Death From Above 1979". Fronted by Lovefoxxx (eh,really!) who is exactly a combination of a Sugarcubes-era Bjork with the inhibition of an any-era Margaret Cho, CSS is a party band. Let me say this again...a-l-c-o-h-o-l induced take-your pants off party band! With

songs like "Art Bitch," "Meeting Paris Hilton" and...awww, fuck it, watching lead singer Lovefoxx jump in circles around the stage making fuck me eyes at just about everyone not afraid to make eye contact back at her was thrilling enough. Mind you, before I realized that under her tie-died shirt was actually flesh colored spandex (which was in a perpetual state of on-off like some sort of clothing light switch) I braced myself for "Uh oh, a real Brazilian wax!" but I am not sure the alternative made me grimace any less. Not familiar with their entire oeuvre, I was immediately thrown into a swirl of kicking myself in the ass for not listening to more of their album as soon as they took the stage. Their sound is exactly what I love about electronic-tinged pop music. It's sharp and funny and brutally irreverent. Ultimately it was such a joyous experience being right down in the front for such an energetic band, hand clapping and sexying myself up quite a bit. And who doesn't love a band that comes out and shouts first thing "It must be Thursday because last night was Project Runway!"
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You could just as well call this tour the night and day tour as the differences between such a high energy band (think 3 pixie sticks below the sugar high of The Go! Team) and the haute couture sonic dark musings of a band like Ladytron. I am not going to waste a lot of words on the Ladytron show here since I have about 100 photos to go through and post suffice it to say that they put on a superb set with them playing every single song that I wanted them to ("CMYK" would have been nice though). I don't mean to undercut them by giving them less text but if you know who or what Ladytron sounds like, there you have their show. Not to say that you don't take away anything from seeing them live, but besides a constantly running video screen in the background, you can only really say so much at the marvelous job they do at producing their sound live in front of you without any special gimmicks. Having only been about 8 sweaty bodies back at Coachella, my spot last night was even better, the holy grail of being right up front against the Marshall Stacks having paid the price early on of putting up with two pseudo lesbians during CSS's set. I can only tell you here how good electronic music is while suckling on the teet of a speaker mere inches in front of your face because I certainly could not hold an intelligible conversation about it today. The leftover static fuzz is quite nice however and I'm beginning to enjoy it.
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I cannot begin to explain how excited I still am that we got to experience Ladytron right here in Orlando because by far, they are one of my favorite bands and cold fish stage presence aside, and I can say I quite like that also in a school marm kind of way, I haven't had my ass kicked this much at a concert since I lost my first set of ear cilia at the Jesus and Mary Chain show, my first rock concert ever. My apologies to all involved as well on this seemingly half-ass posting as I am still drunk on sound, if that is possible. Let's say yes!
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