Brooklyn's happiest couple, Matt and Kim -- also known as Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino -- rocked the Granada with their wildly kinetic, synth-punk dance jams last night. The duo emerged to a chunky, cataclysmically loud refrain of "Where Brooklyn At," hopping on their instrument sets and saluting the crowd with goofy grins. The crowd -- already drenched in sweat in the humid Granada -- began crowd surfing during the band's very first number, a speedy, fuzzy version of "I Wanna."
"We're just getting started," said Johnson, with a gigantic smile.
Schifino's faster-than-hell drum beats kicked the duo's tunes into a tempo of punk fury. In the face of the duo's sinewy, sweaty pace, it wasn't hard to imagine Matt and Kim's legendary early shows, played in the center of a sweltering basement with a crowd of rabid fans dancing in a mob around them. (In fact, the Granada recreated the ecstatic, smelly intimacy of a D.I.Y. show pretty effectively. As Johnson later quipped, "It's good that there aren't any diseases that can be transmitted through sweat. 'Cause we'd have a cesspool going on in here.")
There are few artists who look sincerely amazed that a crowd can regurgitate their lyrics, word-for-word. Matt and Kim didn't just seem charmed by the fact that Lawrence knew their songs; they were jazzed that they showed up, too. Johnson and Schifino's stage banter felt like the crowd was sharing a beer with them in the living room. This isn't all that remarkable in itself, but, as members of Matt and Kim's crowd, we weren't just sitting on their couch, listening in on the duo's shit-talking; we were invited. They liked us.
"This is the song that we did the video for in Times Square where we took all our clothes off," said Johnson, leading into "Lessons Learned."
"You think it'd be easy to take off your clothes, but that shit wouldn't come off," said Schifino.
"Kim just told me today that her tits were looking huge," said Johnson. The crowd laughed. "But that's all kinds of relative," he said, laughing.
"Lawrence, you'd better look at this shit, 'cause it's gonna be tiny tomorrow," said Schifino.
Matt and Kim ripped into the song, soliciting the da-da-da-da's from the crowd in an ethereal, ecstatic moment of communal exchange. "Fuck yeah," Kim said, standing on top of her drum set, with her drum stick thrust in the air.
"This is the kind of shit that makes Kim happy," said Johnson. The balloon popped, and Schifino's ecstatic smile widened.
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