Julian Plenti
“It Came From Brooklyn”
The Guggenheim Museum
NYC9/25/2009

“When your band’s biggest asset is your voice”, my friend Dr Zachary (mutual acquaintance of the late Resonator field reporter Dr Shlomo Zelig, R.I.P.) said early into the first-ever full live set performed for the public by Julian Plenti, the side project band of Interpol’s Paul Banks, as a part of the Guggenheim’s lamentable “It Came From Brooklyn” series of insults to the intelligent events, “why would you spend so much time playing instrumentals?” Truer words, in the form of a critique of he Julian Plenti live set and the …Is Skyscraper album, have yet to be spoken. While on record, the Julian Plenti sound is a mostly dozing, syrupy night-time collection of weirdly sexual come-ons and call-outs, all of the songs mostly-passable but buoyed by a palm’s worth of really, really good tunes and perfect track sequencing, performed live the entire thing went to shit. Opening with what would have gone perfectly mid-set (and with what works perfectly as Is Skyscraper’s penultimate track, coming before the fittingly-titled instrumental swoon-daze “H”), the slow-burning, stalking “Fly As You Might”, and then launching immediately into another one of the record’s few truly awesome moments, “Unwind”, the live incarnation of Julian Plenti made it totally evident they were ready, willing and able to blow their load all over the Guggenheim as quickly and unabashedly as possible.Replacing the sleaze-cheese keys of the album version of “Unwind” with violin and other strings played by members of the so-bad-I-can’t-believe-I’m-mentioning-them-here opening band I’m In You (yes, that’s what they’re called; yes, calling themselves “Fucking Jazz Odyssey” would be more appropriate) made the creep-factor diminish and the “we’re playing MTV unplugged” factor skyrocket, muting the song’s recorded intensity.Two of the album’s other near-perfect gems, “Only If You Run” and “Fun That We Have” also received string swaps, to similar effect (the latter coming unfortunately early in the set).

The middle-to-end bits of the Julian Plenti live show consisted of, for lack of any better way to put this, all the slow songs from the album, one after another. Yes, “Girl On The Sporting News” is a gorgeous song. So is “On The Esplanade”. And “H”. But not when played one after another after yet another, with the patented apathy towards the crowd that Paul Banks achieves so perfectly. The entire set seemed both overly-long and a testament to the easy-to-overlook quality of sequencing with which the …Is Skyscraper albums’s songs are ordered. On record, the fluid, dark muscle of “Fun That We Have” is balanced by the yearning “No Chance Survival”. When the songs aren’t given that backup push, that ability to bleed into and feed off of one another, and rather become one long, unfortunately boring mood piece? It only serves to lessen the impact each song has individually.For all the criticism Interpol has been given about being a “boring” band, what they lack in what passes for “stage presence” these days (i.e. the sort of obnoxious rock-star thrashing about that the Julian Plenti touring band’s other guitarist, resembling a muscled-up Tobais Funke in his “daddy likes leather” stage, was distractingly guilty of) they more than make up for in working knowledge of each of their songs’ strengths and weaknesses.Julian Plenti? Not so much.

After the string of “slow jams” (i.e. almost every song on the album), we got…a cover of “Horse with No Name”, “Only If You Run”, and…a song I can’t recognize.You may notice one thing missing, and if you said “Games For Days” you’re right. They didn’t play the single, which happens to be one of the album’s best songs, a weird, twisted head-fuck of a love song only made better by the creep-tastic video.On a whole, I can understand if we’re supposed to treat this, the first open-to-the-public performance before Julian Plenti go on tour as a full band, as just that-the first show by a band.Even the Julian Plenti website refers to him as a “debut artist”.

But when the show PR material for It Came From Brooklyn proudly proclaimed “Julian Plenti-Paul Banks from Interpol”, are we really supposed to separate one from the other and appreciate this fatally flawed show, this grouping of passable-to-great songs ordered in a way as to diminish all returns, as anything other than a misstep by the frontman of one of our time’s best cult bands? If you’re going to give us a cover and an unreleased song and skip over the single all together, do we not then have a right to eschew the ingrained show-going politeness that comes from actualizing politeness regarding what name you’re performing under and just fucking scream for “PDA”, because you know we all wanted to?Usually, solo projects are approached, by the artist, with something to gain. Something to prove. Unless this entire “Julian Plenti” schtick is a work of musical theatre so post-modern it boggles the mind? All Paul Banks has proven is that, without Carlos D, the old guy and the other dude, his music is boring and stuff.

**alternate title: “Julian Not Quite Enough”

(photo: Kristina Weise )