RIFF MARKET

Escort
Tribeca Grand Sanctuary
July 27

Download: La Belle Epoque's "Miss Broadway"

Weeks ago at APT, I heard this disco band's "Starlight" twelve--brickdense and note-for-note and obviously labored over but ultimately just balls'd out Philly Intl hooks and strings--and had one of those "oh shit" moments when, from the very first seconds of the song, you can sense the impending awesomeness. I asked the DJ immediately what the hell was happening, and he said Escort, and then he said they're not old actually they're new, and then he said they're gonna start playing gigs soon. The news should have made me happy, but instead stuck me with the usual critic-y questions about new bands doing fascist-like throwbacks to sounds of eras not their own. We're talking Sharon Jones, Jet, Jurassic Five, I guess Wynton Marsalis? The real Wynton Marsalis.

Last night was Escort's first gig ever. They played the room in Tribeca Grand most people know as the room a sheepish Annie let a million cameraphoners down. You fuckers got long knives don't you. Much fewer people this time around, good so people could actually dance instead of complaining about how nobody dances anymore, and all the shit about the Tribeca Grand Sanctuary having terrible sound, I can't hear my monitor, that's why my first American gig sucked, seriously, is total bee ess. There were thirteen people or so people up on stage--inc. small string section, three piece horns, two female vocalists, one of whom had red hair and was possibly the awesomest person I've ever seen, pretty much all bases of covered here--full sound but you could hear everything. Hardly a hardknock life.

They opened with an anxious version of "Starlight," the tempo kicked up a bit but, again, nothing seemed out of place--this weird sense of restraint I always associate with my favorite disco tracks, and it was weirder to put faces to it. Especially because, I dunno, is full-on, unadulterated "real" disco still not cool among the lookyloo contingent? I know spinning and especially playing serious disco-funk is dork central, as the general public stops with disco on an ironic appreciation of Saturday Night Fever and an unironic love for Jamiroquai's hat in the "funky" "Virtual Insanity" video. But not only do disco dorks love the mostly saccharine hooks and sentiment, the endless congas, the ridiculous rhythm guitar strokes, the disconess of disco, but they know the musicianship involved, the precision, the restraint, the "I'll keep my shit together so you won't have to" altruistic streak of the best disco tracks, which Escort nailed on "Starlight," their cover of "Miss Broadway," and even their one hard funk number, Roundtree's "Get On Up": basslines on the quarters, same note the whole song, anal horns, the song's only release in the vocals but the rest's a ticking bomb.

So they played five or six songs, the non-"Starlight" tracks are good or very good, and the novelty of 13-piece disco band--mostly just pretty young white kids whose favorite song in high school was "Flashlight" when everybody else just liked the Q-Tip version--will get some internet love because the band probably photographs well. Critically though: Is there room among "forwardthinking" "artists" for just good solid hardworking bands? Or does everything on the radio have to sound like M.I.A. now.

81/100 RIFFS