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Photos: The Young Adults at the Met

Live Reviews

Postmodern blues

OFFICE: Tangled up in trends and new-wave blue.

There are a few things you should know about Office, the Chicago-based quintet who played Harpers Ferry last Sunday. The band started to take shape in 2000, when former London-based American art student Scott Masson (a Wisconsin native) moved from his primary discipline, sculpture, to music, and from the UK to the US. By 2002, he’d made his way to Chicago, where Office began with Masson playing solo, backed only by acoustic guitar. But the project has evolved into something much trendier: the five-piece new-wavish group who turned up at Harpers to support their second CD, A Night at the Ritz (New Line).

On the disc, and at Harpers, Office most obviously bring to mind the Killers, with their herky-jerky yet grandiose take on new-wavy glam-rock that plays off both the Cars and Queen. On stage, Office delivered keyboards, guitars, and conflict. Masson’s take on life, or rock itself, is both up and down. Whereas the music leans toward the hooky — propulsive and pumped-up — his lyrics twist and turn their way through lust and love. That, at least, was what Office had to offer on their most compelling tunes at Harpers, “Oh My” and “Had a Visit.”

Backstage after the show, Masson said his aim has been to write about life outside his own head — to, as he put it, create a world of “a non-sexual desire where the dark and light blend.” The results conveyed the vagaries of a world all tangled up in postmodern blue.