Live Review: Refused with White Lung at The Crocodile 5/30/15

Half an hour into one of Refused's first performances of 2015, singer Dennis Lyxzen laid out their current manifesto. "You know how when you're teenagers playing music and saying you're revolutionaries everyone just kinda thinks you'll grow out of it?" He grinned. "This is how you know we're just fucking crazy." Sarcasm aside, there's a fair amount of truth in Lyxzen's comments. Refused's trajectory is one that no one, especially not their younger selves, could have predicted. From the moment they released their 1998 landmark The Shape of Punk To Come, Refused divided punk circles, with some hailing the jazz- and electronic-incorporating arrangements as forward thinking and others condemning it as kitschy, ineffective, and, worst of all, not "punk". After imploding a few shows into the album's supporting tour, the members unexpectedly reunited in 2012 for an extensive reunion tour of festivals and mid-sized venues, a far cry from the basements they once inhabited. (Which, of course, brought another wave of equally-charged criticism and praise.) This year, they're touring behind a new album, produced with a venerable producer and featuring co-writes with a guy who writes with Taylor Swift, and down one original member, but that seemingly-blasphemous turn now appears to be more characteristic of Refused. In other words, nothing is sacred to the Umeå, Sweden quartet. But when there are no rules to play by, there are no boundaries, and that's how they played during the intimate warmup show at The Crocodile: like a band with nothing to lose and total faith in what they're doing.

Accompanying Refused on their warmup dates was White Lung, the Vancouver group whose 2014 album Deep Fantasy served as their biggest breakthrough to date. Deep Fantasy is a throat-punch of an album, 22 breathless minutes of fury that screams for the listener's attention. In a live setting, it's no different. Singer Mish Way is a commanding presence, whipping her hands around as she shouts through her bandmates' concentrated chaos like she's still trying to purge whatever turmoil she's got living inside her. That's not to say her bandmates are any less ferocious, however. Kenneth William plays guitar like Johnny Marr on amphetamine, switching between thick rhythm parts and sharp, trebly leads while maintaining a stoic presence. Likewise, drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou appeared calmly focused while pounding out no-frills rhythms at a breakneck pace – in heels, no less – as touring bassist Lindsey Troy (also of Deap Vally) fleshed out the rhythm section's rapid pulse. In the 35 or so minutes they were onstage, the band ran through most of Deep Fantasy and a handful of singles and tracks from 2012's also-excellent sorry, only stopping to tune up or grab a drink in between songs. If there's one way for an opener to make an impression on a room full of hardcore fans of the headlining act, it's to provide a performance that's impossible to look away from, and even when Way wasn't staring directly into the audience, White Lung was as subtle as a klaxon and just as loud.

It seemed like everyone in that room knew every word to the songs on The Shape of Punk To Come, every moment where their fist should be in the air, every call-and-response section. Accordingly, Refused didn't play like they were trying to win anyone over – they'd already done that sometime in the past 17 years – so they played like they were the best punk band on the planet, one whose borderline Kanye-level ambitions seemed almost achievable for 75 minutes simply because they believed they could. Then again, it helps if you have a frontman like Lyxzen, one of punk's all-time greats. Dressed in a three-piece suit, Lyxzen's sartorial choices may have been the least-sensible choice of the whole evening – "don't you fucking hate it when when you dress up nice and then...," he joked as he paused to look down at his sweat-drenched shirt, "this happens?" – but his performance was impeccable. The Elvis-via-Ian Curtis dance moves. The Carrie Brownstein-style high kicks. The seriously impressively precise microphone slinging. Every move Lyxzen made onstage was electric, and with less growl and more melodic howl in his voice than on their recordings, his rallies against the masses sounded more hooky than ever. (If he'd sang like this at any point in Refused's first run, it might have been the grounds for some dogmatic idiot to try and beat him up.) In a sweaty club full of devotees in 2015, Lyxzen was the leader of the Refused Party, no longer just a lyrical conceit but an actual philosophy. To be fair, his bandmates were undoubtedly top-notch, turning on a dime to shift between one deadly riff to another, but Lyxzen was what elevated Refused from being a good punk band to a great one on Saturday night.

Of course, whether or not Refused were really all that good in 1998 or 2012 isn't the question though, it's whether or not they are in 2015. On paper, they shouldn't be. They're following up an unimpeachable classic nearly two decades after its release – a move that's viewed as blasphemy to some and just stupid to even more. (Just ask the Pixies.) And they're doing that after they fired Jon Brännström, the man who co-wrote all of their trademark riffs, who it seems wanted no part in Freedom, the aforementioned album. But all signs are pointing to the band's new chapter being one worth reading. Although the new album doesn't arrive until late June, it's probably safe to say that it won't be on par with Shape, but the new songs songs that have been aired so far are hardly embarrassing. Opener "Elektra" is one of two songs written with Katy Perry/Taylor Swift co-writer Shellback (who, it should be noted, spent some time in punk and death metal bands before moving onto pop), but it doesn't sound like any of those things. It sounds like a Refused song, and a pretty good one at that. The same goes for "Dawkins Christ" and "Françafrique", the other two songs played at the Crocodile. It bodes well for the rest of the tour, and the band's future, that Refused won't just have to rely on their combustable classics. They've already done that once. When Refused's reunion began at Coachella 2012, they were underdogs, but when it ended, they seemed better than they'd ever been, and ended up being a rare reunion that added something to a band's legacy beyond a mortgage payment. In 2015, against all odds – again – they still seem vital, leading the circle pit to the beat of their own snare. If Freedom ends up being their swan song – or even worse, ends up being a disappointment – Refused are going down the way they went down the first time: dancing to the beat of their own dissonant beat.

White Lung: