Les Savy Fav are one of the best live bands around. Their front man Tim Harrington is a hefty bald fella with a beard with absurd amounts of energy and creativity when it comes to performing.

For example, while the band and roadies were setting up he came out on stage, sat down and pretended to meditate, then started chatting with the audience. A long haired fan asked for a photo – so he posed for that and proceeded to bite a chunk of the fans hair off. He put it under his cap for safe keeping, a few minutes later recovering it to assemble a DIY voodoo doll made with the hair and some gaffer tape and set it off to be passed round the room. All this before the show even starts.

And when it did start there were plenty more antics – leaping into the crowd blindfolded by a scarf he’d pinched from an audience member, taking the mic into the crowd and going all the way to the back of the venue and out to the street, lifting up a foldback speaker and holding it over his head and still singing into the mic, getting about a dozen people from the audience to throw their hats to him so he can attempt to wear them all at once, heading into the crowd and taking the tshirts off a couple of guys backs and putting them on himself, pashing girls and guys in the front row… Not just your usual run of the mill kind of show.

They sound alright too – the tight band keeps it all together while the frontman goes on his forays. Take a listen to their song The Sweat Descends (mp3).

Support was provided by another couple of bands visiting from the US, Thunderbirds Are Now! and The Hold Steady.

I took some photos which you can see in the Les Savy Fav, The Hold Steady and Thunderbirds Are Now! album. Some might appear in a poster/magazine type thing called Moss.

You’ve got two more chances to catch Les Savy Fav in Sydney – on Saturday aboard PopFrenzy afloat also featuring Jens Lekman and Pretty Girls Make Graves and on Sunday at The Laneway Festival in Circular Quay.