“I danced like an old man trying to find his dentures in a wasps' nest.”

~

By Anders Larson  |  Send to Friend

Le Coq Roq

Like a crouched Deceptacon, the twin towers of Marshall amps and ramparts of Darth Vader LEDs was Justice’s Papal Balcony, emblazoned with a fluorescent, blindingly masculine white crucifix at the center. Like the Basilica of Montmartre overlooking their native Paris, it shone over and across Justice’s fluid-dancing believers -- a churning neon mass of New Rave urchins -- like feral children of a gay apocalypse. Justice, the duo Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, can only be described as a wiry post-cancer Ramones behind the decks and computers. They emerged with “Genesis,” the greatest track never to appear on Queen’s Flash Gordon soundtrack. The centerpiece, the cross -- like a necklace shimmering from within a furrow of thick, musky, Latin disco-chest hair that became their equivalent of Eddie Van Halen’s high-kick: a kitsch rock ‘n’ roll flourish to their dirty, polygynous party music.

I have little to no idea how Justice did what they did, what they actually played or what they merely played back. Puppeteers, maybe, all smoke and coke mirrors, perhaps, but as their set dick-slapped it’s way through “D.A.N.C.E” (a perfect appropriation, distillation and molestation of every ‘80s song that made the kids run into Morrissey’s arms and never look back), it was the sincere euphoric energy of the crowd that shook the skeptic in me like an earthquake. I danced like an old man trying to find his dentures in a wasps’ nest. I chanted like the hooligans I once sprinted from as “We Are Your Friends” pumped its fists into the air of collective memory, making one forget that Justice loudly completed someone else’s partially-solved Rubik’s Cube.

Whereas, on the album, there are moments of poetry to offset the 40 lashes of their party hits, live, they pummel with a purely superficial crunch of dance. Gone is electronic music’s fetishistic obsession with technology, microtonality and its self-referential collective memory. In its place, they make electronica that rocks with the cocksure posturing of the most loathsome ‘80s metal for a generation who weren’t around to witness its balls-to-the-wall banality, its explosive mediocrity.

As cultural appropriation goes, it is both remarkable and brazenly fresh, for Justice obviously have the breadth of musical knowledge within their chosen genre that they’ve willfully chosen to not give a fuck about pleasing anyone but themselves. Fun and sometimes wonderfully disposable, it is what makes them resilient to every insult thrown at them. In fact, they gladly reflect every insult you could think of: They are puerile, phallic and flashy. So what? They truly rock and this bird-flipping attitude is the same sneer that made our grandparents fall in love with Elvis.

What is Justice? A band? A couple of guys with records? A sound? How can one review something that may not even be happening? How can you review a sensation? I asked someone who (because they looked just like them) I thought would be authoritative, and simply got the reply “Justice are JUSTICE, man!” And as their encore broke the spine of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets,” I realized that this is maybe the perfect post-everything statement for the post-everything group for the post-everything generation: What is Justice? Justice is JUSTICE, man.

 

 

Live reviewer Anders Larson is a Brit who takes a lot of convincing.