FLOBOTS in concert

from ToneAudio Magazine, issue #19

Webster hall
New York, New York

November 3, 2008
Article by Brian Hughes Photo by Billy Tompkins

Music fans who are Democrats would have been hard pressed to find a better band to hang out with on the eve of election night than the rap-rock juggernaut Flobots, who were at Webster Hall. Having played the Democratic National Convention to acclaim in August with Rage Against The Machine, both the band and the audience were feeling the sweeping change of the guard and were playing with even more moxie than they had a few months earlier when I caught them at The Bowery Ballroom. I had thought that the Bowery couldn’t contain the power of this band. I felt the same way in Webster Hall, even though it is considerably larger.

Lead singer Brer Rabbit says at the opening of their album Fight With
Tools, “There’s a war going on for your mind.” Flobots are out to prove that there is a conspiracy behind our dubious foreign policies, and that we can change the world together. Combining their conviction on and off the stage, the power of their lyrics, and the sometimes foreboding and chilling viola playing by Mackenzie Roberts, Flobots creates a feeling of intense immediacy, that both the show – and the time – is now.

Highlights of the evening were the funky “Jetpack,” which showcases Brer Rabbit’s robotic and soulfully athletic dancing skills, as well as the song “Iraq” which cleverly uses a rhyme scheme of I, R, Q, and A with the backronym “It’s Really A Quagmire” as the main chorus for the song. This type of clever songwriting is a Flobots trademark, for this is a band rap-rocking about important issues like racism, war, ignorance and love, and not about thug-life, whores, jewelry and narcissism.

The set went almost two hours and finished with the two singles from the album “Rise” and “Handlebars,” which manages to surmise man’s ingenuity and utter horror through history in a little over three minutes. It’s a genius song that builds into a nightmarish totalitarian holocaust. The last song of the evening was a cover of Europe’s “The Final Countdown” and the irony was not lost on the crowd, with Bush’s days now numbered.

That’s the kind of band Flobots are; funny, serious and in on the joke.