Your BEATsTooBig

F or anyone who has never been to the Subterranean in Wicker Park, it’s a dark flight of stairs up from street level, where one will find they’re inside what seems to be a two-level dive bar that could easily be transformed into a rustic brothel. There’s a slight Victorian feel to the décor; wood paneling and filigreed wallpaper line the interior. Dim lamps light the cavernous room and a giant chandelier that looms over the black and white checked dance-floor. The stage was ringed in red light as the ambient synth-pop headliner, YourFeetsTooBig, began to set up.

The band’s duo; Avery Ju and Kevin Benisheck popped onto the stage seeming to be everyone in the room’s pal. Their image was cohesive; Avery and Kevin were both clad in plain, loose t-shirts and jeans but as they set up the buzzing crowd silenced to the loud bang of a keyboard toppling over. Minutes later, a keyboard, symbol and cowbell faced a synthesizer and MacBook Pro head on and Kevin announced to the crowd that their keyboard had broken in the fall. Still, they soldiered on.

The music began with a simple electronic beat that emoted the exhilaration of a summer night as rhythm and melody rose and fell. I could not help but wonder if ‘80’s movie dancehall montages or Daft Punk’s work on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack influenced them because the listener has instantly entered into digital world full of adrenaline and elation. The band puts a whole new spin on “playing” music in that they were getting down to their own music on stage with passion; it was their own private dance party. The aura of the performers and the music’s Friday-night beats create a show that could easily be the illicit lovechild of Passion Pit and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. One can easily picture a studio apartment filled to the brim with flannel-wearing, gold chain-laden, seemingly sight-impaired hipsters fist-pumping the night away to this music. To top it off, even though each song was spaced out by minor technical difficulties due to the busted keyboard, the set, their songs and the booze flowed with ease.

I found myself waiting for a chorus a few times during the night, but to no avail. YourFeetsTooBig‘s few indecipherable vocals slip in and out of audibility but the tunes remain catchy nonetheless. By the second to last song all of The Subterranean, abuzz with three-dollar Sapporo drafts, was clapping to the beat of Avery’s cowbell and getting down in a jam-packed, pulsating whirr. The crowd screamed ‘encore’, I with them and all broken keyboards aside, YourFeetsTooBig put on an invigorating show at The Subterranean that left not one attendee in low spirits. The musicians kept our attention with their erratic bursts of dancing as well as their hipster style head-bobbing sound. Their performance left me saying one thing… In the spirit of Christopher Walken, the crowd’s got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.