Live Review: She Wants Revenge Debut Album 10 Year Anniversary at Showbox 10/21/16

“How much is your 15 year old self flipping out right now?” That’s the text I got from Brittany right after we saw the date go up. She Wants Revenge, celebrating the 10th birthday of their 2006 debut by playing the album in its entirety at the Showbox. Wait, 10 years? Has it already been that long? I hear people say that all the time about other album birthdays, particularly the ones that I get to celebrate from the naive position of not being in the know the first time around. I got to say that a lot at the end of last year, when I saw Minus the Bear play Menos El Oso all the way through and Okkervil River play Black Sheep Boy, both of which I discovered somewhere in the middle of the 10 years most had waited. But something about 2006 and having only the now-defunct Phoenix alt-rock radio state Edge 103.9 at my disposal, it’s like the floodgates to nostalgia have opened for me. Sam’s Town turned 10 this year with The Killers playing two nights at the Sam’s Town Hotel and Gambling Hall in Vegas. The Black Parade cashed in on a decade of triumphant death with a great reissue of the (my opinion) best My Chemical Romance release. And now this - She Wants Revenge, re-venturing up to Seattle to play the 2006 record for what feels like my ears only. It’s because of these things, there’s no reason not to jump in the celebration.As small of a thing as it may seem, I remember everything about buying that CD. I picked it up in late spring 2006 in my truck, over at that really old Target over by Mesquite High School, which I usually never went to because it was so far from my house. I was hardly the first person to hear it, and I knew that much. The record had come out on Geffen in January, but Los Angeles radio had been playing the album’s lead single “These Things” for months. Phoenix radio didn’t hear much of “These Things” until after the LP dropped and the band went on tour with Depeche Mode (how's that for meeting your heroes?). It took the album’s second single, “Tear You Apart”, to really shake the ground a bit. That track was the siren scream that pulled me into that parking lot on a sunny April day to go in and drop nine dollars on something seedy.

To me, it’s funny to even consider “These Things” as the album’s first glance, because “Tear You Apart” sets She Wants Revenge in such a particular light upon first listen. This is the kind of song that impressionable sixteen year olds beg for, the type of song you want to play in your beater first car by yourself and slink down the road at night and feel like you’re up to no good. I didn’t have the time or motivation to actually be up to no good, but She Wants Revenge was the type of record that made me feel like I was. All the seduction and betrayal - it was all the stuff of dreams to a lonely high schooler who had hardly anything for an example of what any relationship looks like, let alone the trainwrecks captured in this compact monstrosity. Thus, She Wants Revenge was the escape I longed for, the source of all the problems I didn’t have but fantasized about feeling. It was the looming fate creeping around corners that would probably be made far more real by my parents finding the CD in my car than by me actually trying to talk to the girls in my honors classes.

She Wants Revenge was the album that was there for me when there wasn’t another. It was dark enough that I felt cool and dangerous listening to it, yet poppy enough to share with classmates without the feeling I’d be typecast as a secret goth (this was a great fear of mine in high school). I discovered Bauhaus on a Starbucks mix CD two months later. I wouldn’t start listening to Interpol until the following year. And as much as I’d loved my parents’ (Best of) New Order for years, I wouldn’t dive into their joy-less roots until college (one exception: “Shadowplay”, which was covered by both The Killers and Silversun Pickups, who also put out a great record in 2006). And thus, the connection between that simple drumbeat from “Sister” and “She’s Lost Control” wouldn’t be drawn for years. It’s funny how that happens, isn’t it? My sixteen year old self would never benefit from that type of critical or comparative lens - I just wanted something to discover. With songs like “Red Flags and Long Nights”, She, whoever she was, never lost control, and in my dumb, sixteen year old, clueless way, I preferred it like that.

Now, here I am, ten years later, and She Wants Revenge is prepping to take the stage. The stage-changeover playlist is stacked with multiple cuts from Disintegration and a bit of Nitzer Ebb. As the band enters, there's a short miscommunication with the lighting guy, who doesn't seem too keen on dropping all red light on the band for their red-flagged opener. But once Justin's minimalist guitar and Adam's bassline set in together over top of driving, synthetic drums, we knew right then it was done. Something about how one sound can send you back to a particular place and time like magic, and the whole crowd went there at once. The crowd is heavily paired up, letting red light dance off of knowing, sideways glances and smirks. As the tracks roll on, everyone is excited to role-play as the jaded romantic on "I Don't Want To Fall In Love" only to turn back to the dance floor for connection on "Out of Control". The energy in the room becomes palpable, as Justin and Adam both let the tension build on stage. Heated action culminates in the hopeful slow-dance jam of "Us" before taking a dark turn sound towards the big finale. And finally, as "Tear You Apart" blares over the speakers, the whole place explodes into a swarm of dancing. In a rare occasion in the album birthday world, the pacing of the album plays brilliantly into the pacing of the show, and She Wants Revenge take a reprieve before a second set of newer material with an audience begging for more. This is the type of escape that comes at just the right moment, when you pick up an album for no other reason than to just fall in. It's that dive that the audience isn't willing to come up from just yet, and She Wants Revenge are happy to lead on into the dark.

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