Meet Me in the Bathroom – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Meet Me in the Bath­room – first-look review

25 Jan 2022

Words by Ed Gibbs

A group of musicians performing on stage, with guitars, drums, and a man singing into a microphone. The stage is dimly lit with red and white lighting, creating a dramatic and intense atmosphere.
A group of musicians performing on stage, with guitars, drums, and a man singing into a microphone. The stage is dimly lit with red and white lighting, creating a dramatic and intense atmosphere.
New York’s pre‑9/​11 music scene is revis­it­ed in this suit­ably lo-fi doc­u­men­tary from the mak­ers of Shut Up and Play the Hits.

Viewed today, it’s easy to for­get that 20 odd years ago, Manhattan’s Low­er East Side (or LES, as it’s some­times known) was more a grub­by dive of an area than an eclec­tic, go-to des­ti­na­tion with plen­ty of gen­tri­fied swish in its tail. In 1999, the neighbourhood’s grime put most peo­ple off. All except the immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties who called it home and the cre­ative out­casts who sought out like­mind­ed souls.

Dylan South­ern and Will Lovelace’s ode to this bygone era of pre-hip­ster New York cer­tain­ly strikes a chord. Back then, rents were afford­able and Napster’s file-shar­ing ser­vice was the big ogre seem­ing­ly out to kill music, then dom­i­nat­ed by bub­blegum pop and nu-met­al copy­cats. Was rock n’ roll real­ly dead? Hell, no! Enter The Strokes – a band all-but born ready for world dom­i­na­tion – plus the Yeah Yeahs Yeahs, Inter­pol, LCD Soundsys­tem, TV on the Radio and more.

All the groups share a sim­i­lar angst. Strokes front­man Julian Casablan­cas is anx­ious about the band’s rapid rise to fame. Interpol’s Paul Banks and LCD’s James Mur­phy are both in ther­a­py before they’ve even start­ed play­ing. But while Casablan­cas’ band is by far the biggest export, it is the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s front­woman Karen O who proves the most reveal­ing, open­ing up about how music helped her over­come issues of iden­ti­ty and belong­ing. Sim­i­lar­ly, LCD’s James Mur­phy, hav­ing dri­ven every­one away up to this point, final­ly finds redemp­tion through a chance invi­ta­tion to play the UK.

As it did for oth­er New York­ers before them, so London’s music scene pro­vides the gold­en-tick­et – and mas­sive expo­sure – that these bands need and deserve, hav­ing been round­ly ignored by indus­try and media back home. The Strokes soon go super­son­ic. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and oth­ers fol­low in their wake.

Sev­er­al of their nar­ra­tives inter­sect, via mon­tages of home video, TV footage and live record­ings. Oth­ers less so. The Rap­ture, for instance, are intro­duced as the dis­co Strokes” and are snapped up by James Murphy’s FDA label. But this sto­ry thread strug­gles to car­ry much weight with what’s going on around it. Under­stand­ably, the film tries to con­vey and cov­er off the scene as a whole – a big ask, with New York a char­ac­ter in its own right. But the jump­ing about from one band nar­ra­tive to anoth­er can feel a lit­tle jar­ring at times.

There’s also not much of a pay­off when Albert Ham­mond Jnr recon­nects with his Strokes band­mates, hav­ing been forced to ditch wicked’ super­fan Ryan Adams – pre­sent­ed here as a bad influ­ence. The band regroups to rehearse and record, but that’s about it. Equal­ly, when The Rap­ture up sticks and ditch Murphy’s label for a mil­lion-dol­lar major, all we get from Mur­phy is a for­lorn I real­ly liked them,” which car­ries more comedic val­ue than intended.

The film works well, though, as a fas­ci­nat­ing time cap­sule of mil­len­ni­al cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Clin­ton is there, talk­ing about the hopes, dreams and pos­si­bil­i­ties of a new cen­tu­ry. There’s pause too to reflect on the bizarre fear that sur­round­ed the world around the issue of Y2K. The deep scar left by 911 on the Big Apple in the years that fol­lowed is also keen­ly felt. Plus, of course, there is that glo­ri­ous music – sound­ing as fresh and vital as it did back then – and plen­ty of it. With all the gid­di­ness of the time to go with it.

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