Video Premiere: Watch Salford Crime Wave Carry Forth The Sleaze With Various Late Night Philly Tribes
If the current question posed by the Philly indie scene is, "YES, we see that you all have beards and are very serious indeed, but where, pray tell, are the nightclubbing freaks of yore?," the answer is clearly Salford Crime Wave. Once described on this very website as "greasy guido music," let us go further, and evolve that remark in tandem with the band's own growth, as displayed with the new clip above: Salford Crime Wave make greasy guido music for when it is a rainy night in mid-1980s Philadelphia and you are waiting at the Black Banana for someone you met in the Au Courant personals. They're not coming, but you don't care; there's always the likelihood that you'll get beat up on your way home, but you don't care; for you have a Sisters of Mercy cassette in your Walkman, and two packs of cigarettes. This is the life you wanted.
Phew! Sorry, I really went somewhere for a moment. But it's that kind of music. "Haoui," of course, is in homage to legendary nightclub figure Haoui Montaug, and in sumptuous black and white depicts a wide array of present-day Philly late night cabaret performers. The band themselves, the song and the video all represent a kind of throughline of Philly nightlife that has never really gone away — it's just found different hidden corners. On principle.
