Music Union : Live Your Music

By Henry J. Hauser, Skeptic, NY

Steel Train front man Jack Antonoff, clad in shredded jeans and that denim jacket from Born in the USA, emphatically pumped his fists while storming the Great American Music Hall stage, no doubt paying homage to the Garden State’s larger than life son, Bruce.

Kicking off America’s birthday weekend with skittering, soaring piano and resilient, survivalist lyrics on “I Feel Weird,” Antonoff is drawn headlong into the self-destructive and oft pointless blame game, howling “if something is lost than there’s something to frame” — voice straining and cracking in passionate agony, “a fire burns and it’s for you!”

Following an ugly break with Drive-Thru Records earlier this year, NJ natives Steel Train self-released LP number three just last week on the band’s newly minted label, Terrible Thrills.

While Antonoff begged the crowd to buy Steel Train’s eponymous LP, curiously, I realized that despite healthy stockpiles of florescent American Appeal Tees and multicolor buttons scattered across the merchandise table, no vinyl was to be found. Apparently, a record label divorce takes its toll, as the band dourly admitted that they no longer smoke pot, but instead merely “worry about stuff and take antidepressants, but not the fun kind.”

Terrible Thrills Vol. 1, a companion album to the Steel Train LP, showcases female covers of all 12 tracks on the new album, including cameos by effeminate indie rockers Tegan and Sara, actress Scarlett Johannson, and the synthesizer fetishizer Deradoorian of Dirty Projectors.

Transitioning from anthemic, toy piano littered “Firecracker” to a power punk rendition of The Boss’s unabashedly poppy “Dancing in the Dark,” Steel Train whipped the Friday night crowd into a frenzy with an impromptu jam on an audience-hurled conch shell. The Jersey natives constantly flaunted the great exports that their homeland have to offer – from backwoods townies to Jewish basketball stars- before harnessing the controlled distortion of fragile, heart wrenching “Kill Monsters In The Rain.” Antonoff’s belching Gibson emerged as a second vocal throughout, complementing the track’s deconstructive rhythmic jilt with its expressive deep, scar-ridden sentiment.

Befitting its former role as a neighborhood brothel, SF’s Great American Music Hall is adorned with decadent, lavish moldings, with garish red paint and octagonal vanity mirrors lining the outer walls. Some key features of the venue include an extremely liberal “in and out” policy, perfect for an intermission smoke, toke, or a trip to the venue’s commission free box-office (shove it ticketmaster!).

Just make sure that you don’t stray too far away from the venue’s vaudevillian façade, those golden lights glowing in the hazy San Francisco night. Great American is located in the heat of the colorful “Tenderloin,” which hosted a disturbing street fight that would claim my buzz as a casualty. Not so good Samaritans hooted and yelped “whoop that ass” to the cacophony of knuckles against flesh, skins to concrete. No sign of the law as the only men in uniform were diligently guarding paid parking lots and garages.

Before returning to my sweet ride — a 1975 VW bus, equipped with wet bar, duel sleeping units, shower curtain blinds of psychedelic geckos and iguanas, and a weed whacker of an engine touting an impossibly efficient 28 mpg — Steel Train exploded in a crowd drenching perspiration on “Black Eye,” a charged power pop number: “I, I, I, I am your tram tram tram tram-poline!”

Throughout the evening, the NJ band’s tightness shone though in an endearing banter and an energetically delivered set. Though those philistines from MTV’s “The Jersey Shore” command a bigger audience than these rockers, you can’t help but root for Steel Train.