The Unicorns

The last time I was in Europe, I dreaded going to parties. At some point in the night, my American accent inevitably would be sniffed out and I would find myself stuck in a corner for the rest of the night hearing about how much I loved guns. Everybody I met had seen Bowling for Columbine, and though I agreed with Michael Moore’s politics I couldn’t help resenting the impression his film gave Europeans: that all Americans are overweight, white, male, and slovenly, even the rare good ones. Being an American might be bad enough, but woe unto me if I admitted I was from Washington D.C., the international capital of bad news. For people who live outside of the city, D.C. symbolizes the very worst of big politics. Washington is a media synonym for the United States government the way Pyongyang is a synonym for Kim Jong Il’s regime. Few pundits know or care that the poor, disenfranchised residents of the city have about as little political power as your average North Korean. But the Unicorns are just simple musicians, and Canadian ones at that, who can’t resist venting their spleen at Bush while passing through what they think of as his hometown. No Washingtonian appreciates being faulted for the current commander-in-chief, especially when the District had by far the highest percentage of votes for Gore nationwide in the last election, and so don’t start with us about our country going down the tubes. Play your pretty, diamond-in-the-rough pop songs, please, and save the harangue for Kansas. If only it were that simple. The Unicorns may sound like straightforward pop songsters on their charming, addictive Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?, but in fact they are a trio of embittered rockers bristling under the sudden burst of attention they’ve received. On record, they may just sound like the Faint with a soul, a danceable bit alternative rock, but live they are as artsy and embittered as the Liars, already bored with whatever music is popular, even if it’s theirs. In their brief, encoreless set, the band burned through most of the material from their album, though they challenged the audience to try and pick out any snatches of a recognizable song. The sounds ranged from an extended, garbled story about a haunted house backed up by the requisite wolf howls and horror-movie creaks to a fuzzy, hardcore stomp that didn’t become recognizable as TLC “Scrubs” until it was halfway done. Each time the audience caught up with the band and cheered for a tune they knew, the Unicorns had already moved on to something totally unrelated: from dueling thrash-punk guitars to the squeaking, chirping keyboard sounds that made their album so successful. I left the show convinced that they had only played three or four songs from WWCOHWWG?, but after listening to the album I realize that they touched on almost every track. Most of songs turned out to be as sprawling and hectic as their live performance, with some of the greatest melodies lasting mere seconds. This ethereal catchiness is probably the secret to its success; to really enjoy the Unicorns requires repeat listens. These songs beg to be played to death, and I’m more than happy to oblige. Yet live bands rarely repeat a song due to audience demand, and nobody has taken the word “encore” literally in decades (except for the Gorillaz, but nobody was even asking them to do it). As the Unicorns’ scattershot set barreled ahead, and their political rants grew less cheeky and clever than bilious and grim, the audience’s enthusiasm ebbed. Those who came expecting to dance shifted uncomfortably, and the crowd thinned. By the time the band broke out its inevitable final number “I was Born (a Unicorn)” — what could have been the theme song to a cartoon that never was — and drove it straight through from start to finish, the burst of applause that followed it sounded both relieved and antsy, ready to get home to the stereo and set the track on repeat.