A diverse crowd gathered at the House of Blues last Sunday night for the chance to see AFI. Young punks, slender hipsters, girls aged nine to 59, and even a few Boston College prepsters showed up to see a band whose style varies album to album as much as one crowd member varies from the next. The quartet, having taken an extraordinary amount of time to meticulously craft their latest album Crash Love, has not performed in Boston as AFI in nearly three years (Davey Havok and Jade Puget's electronic side project Blaqk Audio played at the Roxy in September 2007). In those three years, it appears some of the band's once-faithful fans have forgotten of their existence.
Sunday's underwhelming turnout illustrates more than anything how a band can alienate old fans by continually redefining itself. Crash Love represents another step in the band's neverending creative evolution. Not only is it considerably warmer than the band's previous two albums Decemberunderground and Sing the Sorrow, but it is also more musically complex. The album evokes nostalgia for the band's punk rock past, which is a difficult task since punk songs are typically short, fast, and simplistic.
The songs are a synthesis of the band's earlier work, incorporating some hardcore punk elements of Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes, some gothic elements of Black Sails in the Sunset, and some electronic elements of Decemberunderground.
Nothing emphasizes the band's desire to revisit its roots more than its choice of opener. The Unseen, a Hingham, Mass. street punk band, seems to have missed the memo that punk rock has long since died. Unlike AFI, the band has stubbornly refused to tweak its musical style to fit contemporary tastes and, as such, has been relegated to a lowly opener.
I have no doubt that the band would have been tremendously successful had it emerged in London in 1982, but today's audiences just don't seem to sympathize with the working class rebellion against the first wave of British punk. Unsurprisingly, only a small group of people at the front of the crowd seemed to relish in the band's aggressive sound.
Half an hour after The Unseen's very visible departure from stage, the lights finally went out. One by one, the members of AFI walked triumphantly onstage to cheers and applause. As always, they opened with the first track of their latest album. "Torch Song" melted any snow left behind from the Decemberunderground tour with Jade's melodic guitar solo and Davey's haunting, romantic lyrics.
They then dove headfirst into "Girl's Not Grey" and "The Leaving Song, Pt. II," during which Davey dove headfirst into the crowd - literally. He frontflipped into the audience at the climax of Leaving Song's dramatic interlude and crowdsurfed for the remaining 30 seconds. After being pushed back on stage by security after the song, he jokingly cursed out the audience member who tried to steal his shoe.
Throughout the rest of the energy-filled set, the band played the traditional hits off its three newest albums with two big surprises thrown into the mix. After lamenting the near loss of his shoe, Davey introduced the next song with a simple, "We havent played this song in a while…" My heart nearly skipped a beat as the band began playing "The Despair Factor," a song that was once a staple at AFI shows but hasn't been performed in public since 2006. My surprise at hearing that was nothing compared to the sheer astonishment that overcame me when they played "Don't Make Me Ill" from their first sophomoric punk album. The majority of the crowd did not recognize the song, but the few faithful that did were easily identifiable by their screaming along to the chorus of "No one's gonna tell me, I'm gonna do it my way." AFI have proven with this tour that they have always and will always do it their way.
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