Events

[ROCK] There’s a reason why glam rock comes back again and again—it’s about androgyny. As long as male rockers who are mostly straight and comfortable in their sexuality continue playing the makeup-and-glitter card, boys and girls will continue to flock. It’s part and parcel to rock and roll: a daring sensibility that squeals “I’m breaking all the rules” on the most basic level, and it still speaks to us loud and clear. Struts front man Luke Spiller knew he wanted to be a star at age nine when he performed in a school production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, so it isn’t surprising that he commands the stage with the sort of magnetism and presence of a dude in platforms and a feathered boa—even if he hasn’t gone for broke like that quite yet (just give it time—Zandra Rhodes, who dressed Freddie Mercury, has been designing his stage clothes). Though Interscope released The Struts’ full length debut, Everybody Wants, only just last year, a slightly different version of it was out overseas in 2014, the buzz from which helped them score a slot opening for The Rolling Stones in Paris where the UK four-piece performed in front of 80,000 people. Then they opened the last four shows of Motley Crue’s career. The album’s lead single, “Could Have Been Me” sounds vaguely like Slade, but Everybody Wants drags the net deeper than merely ripping on any one band in particular, instead offering a less specific amalgam of glam and hair metal nostalgia dipped in rock-charged R’n’B with a modern production twist. It’s the sort of debut that careers are made from, but time will tell if Spiller and company can sustain the momentum (and the debauchery that comes with fast fame). Best to strike now, while the iron’s hot, when The Struts play at the Rapids Theatre in Niagara Falls on Thursday, May 18.