"Waiting to sing this song for you..."

State of the Ark

The Ark are the greatest band in the world. To me, today, at least.

Last night I saw The Ark at Cafe du Nord, and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen [1]. The Ark are from Sweden, as they reminded us a number of times--but frankly, I think everyone there could have recited their entire recording history, as this was a crowd that'd been waiting for this show for years, now: this was The Ark's first show ever in San Francisco, and I believe every Ark fan in San Francisco gathered last night to watch them perform.

And, The Ark are a flamboyant pop band, singing glam pop anthems about love, death, acceptance, & all of the other important things. Last night, they started with "Clamour for Glamour", then followed that with the brilliant "Rock City Wankers"--substituting "Frisco" for "New York" in the lyric "New York's a goldmine for rock city wankers"--and my god, it just continued from there, every song they played seeming like the greatest performance possible, a greatest hits compilation of performances of each song.

And you see, I generally go to indie rock shows--Fiery Furnaces, Destroyer, &c.--so watching an Ark show caused a little bit of cognitive dissonance, i.e., how is this band so fucking competent? I.e., How can Ola Salo, their frontman, so effortlessly alternate between vamping it up with a leopard leotard [2]; or shirtless with a pair of wings, climbing onto the speakers at the tiny Cafe du Nord stage--all the while feeling his way along the top of the stage to make sure he had a handhold--and all the while, chatting between songs with the audience? How can a band be so tight & together that they can stop playing mid-song, wait 5 minutes while Ola talks to the audience, then start again where they left off, without any hesitation?

The Ark at Cafe du Nord

And of course, the answer to all of these is that The Ark generally don't play tiny clubs, and they're not an uncomfortable, awkward indie band: they generally play to huge audiences in their native Sweden [3], and they've been playing together for something like 15 years. And the fact that their act translates to a small club is proof enough for me that they're brilliant performers. They're easily the best live band I've ever seen, and Ola the best frontman I've ever seen.

They ended the first part of the show with "One of Us is Gonna Die Young," which is my favorite song from State of the Ark. It's a gorgeous anthem about living life to its fullest, and Ola introduced it as--and I'm paraphrasing liberally here--"now we'll play our last song, and appropriately, it's about death." And it was so fucking good that I almost thought about leaving before the encore, just because I didn't want to ruin that moment as the last bit of the show.

But thankfully, common sense took hold, and I stayed for the encore, which included amazing performances of "Trust is Shareware" and "Calleth You Cometh I", the latter of which in particular was brilliant, anthemic, gorgeous, etc.

Just listen to that chorus, and imagine it being sung by every surging fan in a small club, all of whom have been waiting years to see this band in concert--the energy there was indescribable. It was the perfect end to a perfect show.

[1] My favorite show ever was probably Jane Birkin at Great American Music Hall in 2004.

[2] Which outfit spawned one of Ola's best asides/jokes of the night, in which he discussed the insanity of the US having a beautiful word like "leotard" (picture as pronounced with a Swedish accent), but said word being pronounced differently than "leopard". Which led to a very funny punchline involving the mentally challenged that I won't reproduce here, because frankly, I couldn't do it justice.

[3] "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane", from their first album, was the most-played song on Swedish radio in 2000, and their second album debuted at #1 on the pop charts in Sweden.