“All we ever think about is sex / Nothing really matters to me now,”drawled the lips of a leather jacket-clad Donald Cumming and his crewof Virgins.The words came from a new Strokes-type feet-shuffler called “FastTimes,” which lived up to its name in the pit of Chicago’s Schubasvenue Friday night (Feb. 1), while a fleet of underage girls teasedtheir hair with one hand and snapped digital mementos with the other.
All five Virginstracks, with their tales of twenty-something promiscuity and big-citysocial cliques, flash big neon Strokes-like bulbs (albeit steeped inblues). But now that the full-length record-less quartet has had alittle time to brood over what they essentially consider their demos,cuts like “Radio Christiane” and “One Week of Danger” saw some bold newcymbal and guitar fills. Like watching a teenage Stones strut throughsome half-assed Clash covers, the four also winked in to a funkifiednew intro of “Rich Girls,” with Cumming confiding to the alreadyhot-stepping crowd, “I’ll tell you everything I know, every littlething I know.” Show headliner Ra Ra Riot was now put in the backseat ofa steamy car situation, however the six-piece cunningly etched out aseductive message with a string-driven, Cure-tinged cover of KateBush’s “Hounds of Love.” Guess Cumming was right about sex on thebrain.
We asked: Word has it that Atlanticskipped the foreplay and signed the Virgins before catching a singleperformance. Do you have a favorite unsigned band that demands the samekind of love right now?
