I was going to start out this review by saying that in my geriatric old age there’s nothing I’d rather do less than go to a club, but I realized that’s a lie. Even as a young and energetic 21 year old I never wanted to put on my “unt-ah unt-ah” dress and hit up the klub scene.
Which is sort of tangentially relevant to the Operators show at Schubas on Monday night, I promise. Dan Boeckner (previously of Wolf Parade, and involved in side projects Handsome Furs and Divine Fits) took to the stage as Operators – an analogue post-punk group featuring Boeckner on vocals and guitar, Devojka on synth and Sam Brown (who looks like a cross between Animal from the Muppets and Bob Ross) on drums.
And the atmosphere became…there really is no other word for it – clubby. But in the best of ways! The synth was bumping in time, and you could almost feel everyone’s heartbeats syncing to it as the guitar blasted and hair flew and swooped (mostly from the drummer, but quite a bit from the crowd too.) The group has a weird mix of indie rock/punk/electronic that works really well for them.
Operators are releasing their debut album on April 1st, so nobody really knew the words, but the group did do “Cold Night” and played a couple of other tracks off their EP as well as songs from the upcoming album. For those just there out of nostalgia for Wolf Parade, they probably weren’t all that thrilled, but for anyone looking for a new amalgamation of sounds they hadn’t heard before, they were in the right spot.