Prior to a few months ago, my experience of the Eagles of Death Metal was limited to the handful of times when a coworker would play Peace Love Death Metal on the blown-out shitbox that constituted a stereo at my old workplace. I gotta tell you, it didn't blow me away. I more or less dismissed it as a plodding slog through a parade of dumbed-down blooz-rawk cliches perpetrated by bored radio-rockers with too much money. Earlier this year, however, Death By Sexy was recommended to me by such a diverse collection of people ? types that I assumed would be the last people to ever enjoy weak bro-rock ? that I figured it wouldn't kill me to check it out. And indeed it didn't: the album's a raunchy, freewheeling stomp through Elvis/Stones/T. Rex territory, with a focus fixed firmly on the pelvis. With their tongues jammed hard into their cheeks, Josh Homme (the Queens of the Stone Age frontman, though he only plays drums on this record) and his high school buddy Jesse ?The Devil? Hughes mine solid gold out of cheap cliches by riding the proverbial thin line between stupid and clever. They've got the advantages that come with established success (a big studio and the knowledge to use it), but the album still has an off-the-cuff feeling that keeps everything from sounding overproduced. It's raw and polished; they've got scale and skill of pros, but their don't-give-a-shit-just-having-fun attitude is something you don't find often in a major-label artist who's (presumably) obligated to sell a lot of records. Which Death By Sexy has definitely done. The album was released by Downtown Records (they've also got Gnarls Barkley), which is really just a sly, recently-founded subsidiary of Warner devoted to these artists that are starting to look like the ?new mainstream? now that everybody who bought an iPod and discovered p2p wants something a little more exotic: pop that's too clever and creative to fall into established market categories, but can still make wads of cash anyway (if you ask me, Downtown should sign Annie).


Moving on: the actual show. I arrived a little late to the sold-out Commodore to find out that openers The Giraffes didn't make it across the border and The Eagles were already halfway through their set. So my guest and I hustled to the front as fast as we could, which wasn't easy, given the intense crush of screaming fans with devil horns aloft. Let's regard the stage: we're looking at four thirty-something guys that have L.A. written all over them. Aside from the sweaty and livid Jesse Hughes (sporting mirrored aviators and an impressively thick moustache of which he is obviously proud ? after one tune, he shouted, wild-eyed, ?Have you ever been rocked by a moustache like this before??) the rest of the band looked liked hire guns: the kind of Hollywood rock dudes that have been around the block too many times for their own good, but are still happy to get up and rip off a few solos if they think it'll get them laid afterwards. The lead guitarist was bald as a billiard, going to fat, and sporting horn-rims. The bassist, by contrast, was a neolithic hesher with a curtain of lank black hair and a Paul Frank tee with a pink guitar on it. The drummer was not Josh Homme, to my surprise, but another random (a bottle blonde whom Jesse referred to as ?Gene, the Traveling Machine!?). Rumour has it that Homme is busy recording the new Queens album, but I suspect that he may just be too big to want to tour the country in a band where he just plays drums. Those who've seen the Eagles before tell me that Homme wasn't on the kit then, either.


Between songs, Jesse keeps darting off-stage and returns rubbing his nose and face, sweating, and shouting like Elvis Presley possessed by the devil. As evidenced not only by the total conviction with which he's belting out his jams (almost every one of which has something to do with banging very young girls) but with his utterly shameless stage banter, the irony apparently ends when the drugs kick in. Between every song, Hughes runs back and forth across the stage, pausing at different spots to raise his arms and summon adulation from the crowd, which is all to happy to oblige. Much gratuitous audience-stroking ensues ("Seriously, guys, this is the best show we've ever played! What a rock n' roll town!") and, naturally, the kids ate it up. I've literally never seen so many devil horns in the air as at this show. Tons of screaming. Mr. Hughes' whole physical person communicated his enthusiasm for the blowjobs he was sure to recieve after the performance. He specifically thanked "the ladies" in the front, both sides, and the back, and requested three separate rounds of applause for "the beautiful babies here tonight". He also didn't play a note without his aviators on.


Of course, the band also ROCKED, as only a gang of shameless, coke-stoked, stadium-seasoned professionals can. They may not have had heart, but they had their heart-on. They gave 'er, so to speak. Since I missed the first half hour, I only caught a couple tunes from the new album (and a bunch from the debut), and apparently I missed a cover of "Stuck In the Middle With You". I did, however, witness bang-up versions of "Beat On the Brat" and "Brown Sugar" that (mind-bogglingly) met with a cooler response than the band's own material. Still, that's like saying that a house on fire is slightly less hot than an apartment building on fire: when you're in the middle of it, you can barely tell the difference.


At the end of the night, it was just a good time, though I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it. Oh, and in case you think I was exaggerating, an encounter with Erin from Timbre Productions (the company that put on the show) confirmed my suspicions about post-show antics: the backstage doors were mobbed with young girls, and the band's orders were ?let them all in?, which, I'm told, created a great deal of trouble for the hapless Timbre crew.


Is it embarrassing that grown men should play cocky, transcendently stupid teenage music about scoring with girls half their age, for the purpose of doing just that? Of course it is. Was the music good? Well, that depends. Do you like rock and roll? Does it matter that rock and roll is technically dead and that this whole retro-macho game is just the opportunistic beating of a massively dead horse for money and fame? I mean, unlike most retro rockers, the Eagles aren't trying to re-live the past, they're using stylized caricatures of familiar rock moves, not for the purposes of rocking so much as "rocking". Like the Darkness, they're self-parody on purpose, but with a fake front of bro-down realness. And, despite their jokiness, they still reap all the benefits (however dubious) of the rock star archetype: drugs, girls, and screaming fans.


Oh, well. I suppose there were ways of exploiting young peoples' desires to fuck, get fucked, and get fucked up before rock and roll was invented, and even more ways of doing it after (hell, next to Cam'ron's ?Give Me Some Head?, the raunchiest Eagles' song is quaint and old-fashioned). If you wanted art, you wouldn't have gone to see the Eagles of Death Metal in the first place.