The Humans

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More About

• The White Stripes
• Toyah Willcox
• Robert Fripp
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Electronic Music

On their MySpace page, U.K. band the Humans list the White Stripes among their influences. We don’t hear it. Bauhaus, maybe. Or perhaps a Warhol-produced avant-garde collective. With their irony-laced, ruminative lyrical content and sparse pseudo-experimental arrangements, the Humans skew more grad-school science project than pop-producer’s wet dream. But this is no cause for concern, as their creative ranks are reinforced with some heavy hitters, including industrial-music wunderkind Bill Rieflin on skins. As an added bonus, vocalist Toyah Willcox is the wife of legendary King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp (who occasionally plays with the band). Although the Humans may view themselves in the same vein as those who produce upbeat garage rock, their music seems like it would be more at home scoring a movie about a postindustrial landscape in which robots have turned against their masters. It’s irony at its simplest—or, perhaps, its most complicated.
Fri., Jan. 1, 9 p.m., 2010