Best Shows of 2013: King Krule at Fortune Sound Club, December 13

King Krule from eventura photo on Vimeo.

You don't piss off a T-rex. The audience at Fortune Sound Club found that out when Archy Marshall, the 19-year-old wunderkind behind King Krule, blurted, "Yo, fuck that shit!" seemingly out of nowhere mid-set. I didn't find out until days after the show that a fist-fight had broken out on one side of the stage when an audience member tried to barge his way to the front. Krule put down his guitar and nearly jumped (or did jump) into the fray, and a mix of security guards, audience members, and bandmates swooped in to hold him back. Without mentioning the incident, Krule, visibly still fuming, picked up his guitar, announced, "This one’s about lizards," and stormed into a version of "A Lizard State" that could have made dinosaurs tremble.

You don't get a true sense of how mismatched King Krule's tyrannosaurus voice and gecko frame are until you see the young Brighton pogo on stiff legs in front of you, his Jurassic voice roaring at you from "the best sound system in Vancouver." His backing band was also incredible: Lively jazz drum-fills took on post-punk urgency in a literal flick of a wrist. Second guitar, bass, and sampler integrated with Krule to fluidly shift between menacing and dislocated, dark-ambient bossanova cool, all while emitting a New Wave shimmer.