The Hundred in the Hands | This Desert

Most Likely To: upset very easily offended cavalrymen of all ages.

Brooklyn synth-pop duo The Hundred in the Hands take their name from the Lakota name for the Fetterman Massacre, a rather one-sided battle in the Plains Wars in which a detachment of U.S. cavalry was slaughtered by the Lakota because their commander couldn’t handle a bit of butt-shaking.

From Wikipedia:

“Fetterman took the bait, especially since several of the warriors stood on their ponies and insultingly waggled their bare buttocks at the troopers.”

Apparently a bit of a bluenose, Captain Fetterman was so pissed at such a display that he promptly led his men straight into an ambush by pursuing the ass-wagging scoundrels.

God only knows what the late captain would think of the combo named after the battle in which he got himself snuffed. Chances are he wouldn’t much approve of them–the man got himself and seventy-nine others killed over being mooned, after all. It’s safe to assume he wouldn’t approve of any music that might encourage youngsters to jiggle their rumps like common doxies and cads. And while the young master and lovely lass who comprise the Hundred in the Hands are far from lascivious by today’s standards, their music is probably sexy enough to have Fetterman spinning in his grave.

Take “Building in L.O.V.E,” the opening cut on their EP This Desert. Jason Friedman lays down a bed of shimmering synths and Eleanore Everdell promptly flops down upon it and commences to cooing. It’s certainly enough to make an upright cavalryman blush, right enough, even if it does seem to be built on a synth line lifted from “Erinner Dich” by German popsters Klee, but that’s probably just a coincidence.

Fetterman would also be appalled by “Tom Tom,” a jaunty number that combines a rhythm track that sounds like synchronized gargling with a perky little keyboard riff –bad enough to name a band after his massacre, but to name a song after the instrument the poor guy probably heard as he was having his clock punched is just going too far, if you ask me. I would heartily disapprove of the proceedings myself, if it weren’t so catchy.

On other tracks, the duo brings in touches of Goth, most notably on “Sleepwalkers,” in which a Robert Smith style guitar line snakes around a pulsing keyboard line. It sounds sort of like the granddaughter of that song that Buffalo Bill dances to in Silence of the Lambs, although nowhere near as creepy. And Fetterman wouldn’t need his cavalry manual to know that what Everdell keeps insisting she’s into on the bouncy “In To It” involves as much buttock bouncing as the insult which vexed him into pursuing his untimely end.

As far as synth-pop goes, The Hundred in the Hands are pretty pleasant. They aren’t anything worth getting oneself and fourscore buddies perforated over or anything, but what is? Fetterman just needed to loosen up. If he had heard This Desert, he might have realized that when someone shakes their ass at you, the best thing to do is get down off your horse and start shaking yours, too.

Watch the video for “Tom Tom” from The Hundred in the Hands: