review by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photos by Chris Dinan

New Year’s Eve at Vega was the fifth time I’d been to a Universe Contest show in 2013.

It’s a riot each time, with the vim undiminished by repetition. But in that it’s now a well-known hysteria, sometime after midnight, the mass of people, washed in green- and blue-lit baths, become an object of fascination as well.

On this night, Universe Contest begins their set just after 11:30, so they can usher the crowd through the midnight countdown and play until around 1 a.m. The towering scaffold lighting they introduced at their Lincoln Calling set is in full effect and the October addition of dancers in tight clothing and strange masks was ramped up, too, with New Year’s Eve’s participation of the Resplendent Jezebel Burlesque.

Once the band has doffed their sparkling tuxedo jackets and the burlesque dancers (men and women alike) are doing a racy version of “the monkey” from the tabletops behind us, I ask my friend if he thinks the band has anything to say about sexuality in their performances.

He laughs and shakes his head. It’s totally possible he didn’t want to talk about what a rock band means at 12:30 in the morning with balloons raining down on us, and I don’t blame him.

And maybe he’s right, Universe Contest might not have any clarified stance to put forward in their lyrics or their stage presence about sexuality or individuality. In the last two years they’ve acted out a costume-store version of their song “Someone Else,” dressing as Santas, robots, wolfmen and glitter queens — seemingly whichever way the wind blows their carnival tastes.

So I watch the sold-out crowd of people spring to life when they hear the familiar haunted funk groove of “Relephants.” They give themselves with literal open arms to be baptized by the shrill cries of “Dying.” And in what’s invariably the most voluminous sing-along of a Universe Contest set, they echo the hidden, depressive moods of “Snake Stand.” Beneath the bouncy chords of that song is a message about the quiet despair in which streamers are to be swept off the dancefloor later that night. And for the song’s five minutes, the band and its fans share a congregational laugh about the thought of the approaching morning.

Even given the mosh that congeals at these shows, step back and watch. It’s 100 people dancing with themselves, inducing their bodies into widely-drawn circles. Following the band’s lead, they chant vowel sounds. To a total stranger, it must look like something primal, tribal even.

Outside of those mainstay songs, Universe Contest music could be about galactic transport, it could be cleverly titled like “The Day The Earth Took Pills,” or it might not even be English. But these hairy men routinely pack a room full of people anxious to throttle themselves, and then watch the room submit to a communal moment. This moment immortalizes all the salty smells and moshing bruises of a local legend people will want to write about in 15 years. Someone will compile an oral history about the anonymous woman in the gas mask or bassist Jon Dell’s assless chaps or the first time a big crowd saw Universe Contest play at Lincoln Exposed in 2012 and some loner screamed “Zeppelin!” into your deaf ear.

Part of that legend may look foolish or rowdy. It may look like beer cans hitting fretboards or guitarist Tim Carr calling the crowd “motherfuckers” three or four different times, each time handcuffed to an apologetic “we love you.”

But it’s not artifice, it’s not neediness. This is not dance-pop that begs you to please let your inhibitions go just for tonight like it’s your last night on earth. Universe Contest would never ask something so fatalistic or so imaginary of its fans.

This fall, what their shows reflected is that the glow from this mammoth light rig was the band’s internal vision of itself. That the “bearded” woman gyrating behind the drumkit is part of the show they imagine in their sleep.

So, yes, Universe Contest has something to say. About shamelessness, about Lincoln, about us and our desire to clamor to the cult of a band that builds an amusement park on stage a few times a year and always seems to giggle once they realize how colorful, how excessive it’s become.

Even if it’s just a shriek in the dark winter of a so-called college town in the middle of nowhere, every time we go to a Universe Contest show and behave like we mean to forget ourselves, it’s more about remembering.

About shaking fists and feet like a bunch of possessed children before somebody long ago told us we had to enunciate, to wear clothes, that there was nothing to see here.