French kicks.

It's pretty rare that a promo CD in my mailbox is going to be worth a listen. It's even rarer that some random publicist will convince me that I'm going to love it enough to write a "perfect piece on hot up-and-coming bands." Well, much to my surprise, this actually happened with the French Kicks. Driving synths and piano, inventive drum beats, jangly guitars; moody and sentimental, it's indie rock crooning at its best. A great record for impressing the ladies, too; they swoon over this kind of stuff.

You know when you kind of like an album. and then you pass it to your friends and they love it--and that makes you appreciate it even more? Well, this one, The Trial of the Century, has so many different elements to it that it may just take several discerning ears to appreciate the entire thing. It gets better with each listen, and I figured more people ought to know about it. So I decided to go for the interview. Bomb number one.

Bad stage setup, bad lighting, bad photos. And the most interesting thing I got out of interviewing the singer, Nick was that he plays tennis and does landscape design in Manhattan. Sorry, but that's just not gnarly enough for your average Thrasher reader. The show was sick, though, and four months later, with the album still pulling its weight. I made a second attempt to get better coverage. I thought we could set up a killer outdoor shoot in San Francisco's North Beach, interview the whole band this time, and get a well-rounded feature that would really blow our readers' minds. Bomb number two.

The instructions were to meet the band at the side of the club at 6:00. They still hadn't done their sound check, so we came inside and waited, and waited, while technical difficulties ran the show for the next two hours. Before we knew it, all our daylight was gone, the doors were opening, and our names weren't on the list. The stickler management at the club made us leave the building, and the show was sold out.

Fortunately for us, the French Kicks are cool dudes. I mean so cool that they're almost the anti-band, the anti-rockstars. First off. Nick actually answered his cell phone when I called, even at 10:00 in the morning, when he obviously didn't recognize the caller. Second, these guys are punctual. The sound-check dilemma was beyond their control. Third, they're very accommodating. They even lied and said we were their merch people, and when that didn't work, they took two Mends off of their own guest list to get us in. What's more, the guys went out of their way to meet us after the show to do the photo shoot.

The location was a friend's art party in the Mission. A pretty shabby turnout, and yours truly was trying his best to turn it out as a last-minute DJ. Thinking it clever to play a Steely Dan track (a known influence of the band) upon their arrival, I managed to clear the dance floor of the few excited parties who were actually enjoying it up to that point. Bomb number three.

It was evident they were only there for the photos, but they were good sports and hung out for about 40 minutes while I was lost in my headphones. Meanwhile, it seems my photographer was more concerned with the party in the back than the business in the front. At least that's what the Kicks claimed as they bid me goodbye. The other side of the story would be that my trusty film blaster was off scouting for a spot and the band flaked on him. Not sure who to believe, but Nick expressed his apologies before leaving. So at least it ended on a good note for me.

And speaking of notes, an anonymous hand-scrawled poem mysteriously appeared on a communal writing tablet in the bathroom that night. Now, the photographer and I were definitely the only ones at the party who knew who they were, which makes me wonder: Would one of them actually write something so egotistical about themselves that I'd have to take back the anti-rockstar comment I made earlier? We may never know, but get a load of this:

I recollected the times where my heart dropped when he sang "One More Time!"

He was towering and beautiful, his name was Nick, and his name was engraved in my thoughts.

He called and said to step in this place where music and art played, and now I stand here writing words which project from my distorted equilibrium through desire and distorted truth.

Viva La French Kicks!