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Welcome to the
LITTLE ENGINES Issue Three Electronic Reading Tour!

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excerpts from Les Savy Fav: Cheerleaders for the Apocalypse
interview and story by Mike Daily

Lifter Puller singer/guitarist Criag Finn, now lyricist for The Brokerdealer, sums up everything he has to say about Les Savy Fav in this anecdote:

"We played with them in Detroit at this club called the Gold Dollar," Craig says. "The first band, a local band, was playing to a pretty much empty room. As part of their set, this band was auctioning off items from their living room. They attempted to get the bidding going on a lamp. 'Do I hear one dollar? Would anybody want to buy this lamp for one dollar…?' No takers. Finally, Tim Harrington, frontman for Les Savy Fav, stands up and gives him a dollar and takes the lamp…

"Tim brought the lamp back to the Les Savy Fav merch table and put a Les Savy Fav sticker on the lampshade. Later that evening the club was full and the band was putting on a typically amazing show. Tim pulls out the very same lamp and says, 'Who wants to buy a Les Savy Fav lamp for $10?' He sold it immediately to a guy in the front row."

* * * *

lyrics: "hip hip for imperfection / I want to make a mess / I've got a secret theory / that disarray works best / and though it can't work often / oh my God when it does / watch as the outburst softens / it's had its way with us…

These lines really say a lot to me about Les Savy Fav.

As the band races in their tour van from San Francisco to Los Angeles to make a show that evening at the Troubadour club, where I'll be seeing them for the first time, I tell this to Seth, the guitarist in the band, by phone.

"Really, that's awesome," Seth says. He relays it to the rest of the band: "He says that those are lines that really say a lot to him about us."

"I could see that," Tim says.

* * * *

The wordplay of Tim's lyrics can be playful but it can also be dark.

"Yeah, I feel that way too, I guess," He tells me. "I agree with that. Lyrically I like to do a sort of cheerleading, the idea of sort of like a bleak cheer. The kind of thing that you sing along and then all of a sudden you're like, 'Wait, what do those lyrics mean? Someone else might say, 'Well, it's heavy lyrics, it's got to be sung in a heavy manner.' Or everything's got to be just so sincere. I'm much more interested in this, sort of like the tension of, 'Oh, this sound sounds one way - the mood, the tone is more subtle, more complicated, so you have to do a cheerleading'… someone who would be like Cheerleader for the Apocalypse. Like, cheerleading bad news." He laughs. "Something you feel and you're like, 'Huh, that makes me feel good and bad at the same time.'"

* * * *

That night at the Troubadour, Tim is in especially fine fettle. He's wearing a gauzy scarf that he says belongs to his mom. "Does your mom dress you?" a guy in the audience says. Tim doesn't hear him. The music commences with authority and he hoists the weighty mic stand overhead, singlehandedly balancing it upside down before setting it back down and rushing the front of the stage. Apocalypse now. He crouches to shout lines in audience members' faces, which show surprise, exhilaration, wonder.

Respect.

The singer takes off his shirt and pats his protruding belly. He veils his face with the scarf then simulates a bra with it. The music is getting to him and he pours half a bottle of red wine over his head, vocally going off like a fringe character in a low-budget movie. He takes a big slug from the bottle and motions to a guy near the front to open his mouth. The guy shakes his head, no, smiling. Another volunteers and the wine is dribbled from mouth to mouth, with some success. Tim balances an apple on his head and stands at attention, then picks it off and chomps at it, pieces crumbling from his mouth. He changes into a shirt that says NEW YORK CITY, people cheering it. Was the prop an oblique reference to The Big Apple? Out come flashlights. Tim steps offstage into the crowd and collapses to the floor, still singing. Then he's back on stage. He goes into the wings and returns with a blue blanket, which he drapes over the shoulders of Seth like a cape.

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For a paper copy of this story, along with other fine surprises, check out the newest issue of LITTLE ENGINES at tnibooks.com.