Tom Vek

Troubadour - November 23, 2005

Live Review by Daniel Brody

The indie script is a bit paint-by numbers at this point.  It works like this: take some critically acclaimed post-punk band that never had a gold record in America (although they may have had a number one record in England), copy their ping-pong bass and angular, choppy guitar riffs, and you now have the face of critically acclaimed underground rock in the new millennium.  Bonus points if you wear eyeliner or have vaguely anti-Reagan, I mean, anti-Bush politics.

It sucks to feel so jaded about this, because Tom Vek is decent enough.  He plays drums and sings like the guy in the Romantics.  He strikes all the right new wave poses, sings about music television, and throws out one snappy Duran Duran riff after another.  The songs are all cynical posturing about love and music, and Vek makes it all seem very effortless and nonchalant.  It is about as cool and hip as rock and roll gets these days.  And it’s all beginning to feel like a grind.  There are a million bands that play this kind of music, and they all get boatloads of hype—and are indistinguishable.  Yes, it beats the hell out of nü-metal and Dave Matthews Band and Nickelback and whatever else passes for alternative rock.  But few of these seventies and eighties revivalists are creating much of anything new; they’re nostalgic for a time when rock and roll was first getting deconstructed and analyzed while it was being played.  It’s not much different than putting on a leisure suit and reminding yourself how cool you would have been in 1978. 

Still, if you are into Franz Futureheads, Tom Vek is right up your alley.  He competently plays his own version of new wave, and fashionable nostalgia is still fine in the moment.  Most of this genre, though, will go the way of The Black Crowes and Lenny Kravitz, forever paling in comparison to the bands that inspired it.