The Smell
Los Angeles, CA
Words by Aaron Pompey
Photos by Jason Vaughn
Through their wide grins, Matt and Kim watched The Smell’s shoulder-to-shoulder crowd fling each other across the standing-room-only warehouse floor, the waffle-print soles of myriad black sneakers zipped, flopped, and whirled during every moment of every melody. Sitting through sets by both Loveboat and Underground Railroad to Candyland, the Brooklyn duo watched the familiar underground scenester downtown denizens take control of their subculture. After URtC’s costumed rockers exited the stage, it would be more than the usual breakdown-to-set-up timegap before Matt and Kim would overcome some technical difficulties, fetch a back-up keyboard from their tour van down the road, and come through with a pitch-perfect performance.
Matt and Kim are a duo hailing from Brooklyn and who seemed to have re-birthed emo rock as something that the happy kids listen to. This isn’t your sad, slightly-older brother’s emo. It’s more of a reach-back to the angry-happy Ramones’ anthemic anti-antiestablishment beats and the dreary, if fast-paced, synthesizing of New Order. What’s remarkable is the way that joy permeates the scratchy, homemade rock music that somehow emerges from a set of drums and a used keyboard.
That may be their M.O. – the happy thing – but it’s not really any kind of distillation of the complex lyrical anecdotes and minor-key musings that characterize their music, and their art in general. It may be no secret that Kim Schifino – the Kim half of Matt and Kim – is a stellar artist whose installations recall the strange, surrealistic animation that once was the staple of state-funded Canadian cinema. Schifino’s art offers a mid-size window into the music that seems to be single-handedly making smiley-smilers out of shoegazers. Still, it’s happy, but not too happy (Kim’s pre-photo shoot directive: don’t make them doing anything “cute”), but enough to make some post-Ritalin addicts abandon the healing promise of science in favor of the healing promise of art.
The black-teed kids are not without their antagonism, though, and it was halfway through the show that the the Smell’s anti-celebrity architecture permitted the audience to share the stage which, in turn, resulted in a few tense moments, with the headliners forced to share a bit too much of their set with kids who had forgotten how to enjoy a show.
That’s maybe the best way to test a performer’s skill, or grace. One of the life lessons I learned as a kid that I have never forgotten is the Aesop fable about the traveler, the sun, and the wind. Where the wind gambled that his gusts could force the traveler to remove his coat, the sun offered a gentler, more successful solution. Like any polished performer, Matt betrayed no regard for the antics and delivered a flawless show.
