The Wake

“Is the concert that boring?” some trashed twenty-something girl asks me. She keeps stealing drags off my cigarette – and it’s starting to piss me off.

“No,” I tell her. “But I am getting paid to be here. I’m not a huge fan.”

“Oh,” she says, ashing the Camel-filtered over the crowd below.

She’s one of many who are hanging-cool upstairs in The Quest’s upscale balcony. From the looks of it, she’s having quite the time. But for the rest of the audience, the real action is taking place two flights of stairs below in the main-room.

“Are we having a good fucking time!?” the Ashton Kutcher look-alike on-stage screams to the audience. “Outside, it’s Minneapolis, but in here it’s bright, sunny California.”

The hordes of high-school students erupt in cheers – they’re on a Hollister Holiday, and the five guys flailing around on the stage – Los Angeles rockers Phantom Planet - are the closest thing to SoCal this side of a major shopping mall.

Unfortunately for these fans, this Phantom Planet sounds little like the band of a couple years ago. Gone is the group’s former sun and fun romp-ready pop-rock. Instead, the band has decided to go East Coast on everyone’s ass, churning out 2004’s self-titled, Phantom Planet. The album sounds a whole lot like The Strokes and very little like the P.P. of old.

For the band, this couldn’t be better.

“I think the record we just did is kind of more of what we’ve always wanted to be,” says guitarist Darren Robinson before the show. “I mean we still have our pop roots, but this is what we’ve always tried to be. I think we finally captured our live energy on CD.”

He’s not wrong. The band’s latest LP flat-out rocks, and so does the show tonight. It’s drummer Jeff Conrad’s birthday, and most of the band has already begun celebrating.

Lead-singer and resident Kutcher stand-in Alex Greenwald struts around on-stage, sipping on a beer-bottle. He’s the guy that everyone wants to fuck. Clad in an Adidas track-jacket, he’s a Hollywood Mick Jagger; a sexy as-all-hell androgynous idol.

Grinning, he slides up to the microphone, snakes himself around it and signals the band to hijack it headfirst into the next number.

Never has the MC5 been done such justice: these Cali-fried can kick out the jams with the best motherfuckers. And everyone in the room is feeling it tonight.

“Shit, you guys are fucking awesome,” Greenwald tells the audience. He’s cocky as a Casablancas, but it works. While the rest of the band plows through a hyper-drive version of “Always on My Mind,” Greenwald flings himself into the audience, offering himself up to the hands of his adoring masses.

It’s exactly what the band wants. “We want people to come see the show and leave and go ‘wow, that’s a great band,’” as Robinson said backstage.

Consider tonight mission accomplished. Though the band completely reworks fan-favorites like “California” and “Lonely Day” – both of which hardly resemble the original versions – the fans don’t care. And even if they did, they’re too caught up in this audio-visual assault to show it.

The show keeps rolling for a solid hour and a half. Ripping and never-tripping through a mine-field of distortion, half-stack amps and a deadening drum-attack, the band proves to be a surprisingly vicious rock ensemble.

Rounding out the set with jet-washed versions of “All over Again” and latest single “Big Brat,” the shaggy Cali-quintet ignites the packed club. Everyone is having some kind of musical orgasm; and Phantom Planet – looking like J. Crew models on too much pot and booze – are milking them for all they’re worth.

In a final, awe-inspiring finale, Greenwald takes a running swan-dive off the stage monitor, flinging himself head-first into the mosh-pit. It’s crazy – it’s insane – it’s mentally-questionable. And it’s absolutely fabulous.

But the crowd isn’t going to be satisfied just yet – and neither is the band for that matter. After returning to the stage for an encore, the band cracks open beer bottles, showering the frenzied audience in a spray of grain alcohol. “Any body feel like partying tonight?” says Greenwald. “We’ll be upstairs drinking until three in the morning.”