Bombay Bicycle Club at the Metro Theatre 28/9/14 - Live Review

The stellar simplicity of EAST’s vocals diffuse the emphasis on labyrinthine synth. Although, her voice and the melodies that it rests on are indeed as idyllic as each other. She is organic, her tonality sometimes hollow; at other times it soars. EAST guides us leisurely through a field of amiable songs; some demure, others more impassioned. Her lyricisms are vague, yet resolute, undeniably above her years. She closes her set with the genial ‘Old Age’ – “With an old heart / And eyes that have seen more than they should / I’d die of old age if I could.” A brilliant confidence in her art assures both the audience, and perhaps herself that she is moving us all somewhere higher.

Hailing from Melbourne, City Calm Down (at least physically) resemble a scene which can only be coined as Post-Chet-Fakerism. Make of that what you will.

Amongst the crowd comparisons are drawn on a broad spectrum – some describing their sound as similar to that of The Horrors, and others to that of The Killers. In any case it is a deeply developed sound; characterised by unassuming, modular synth patterns: the gated reverb on a Yamaha percussion pad intertwined with the hardboiled baritone of lead singer Jack Bourke very much so the backbone of an obvious, yet nonetheless exciting eighties influence.

Showmanship and concentration define City Calm Down’s performance, Bourke

swings his microphone cord around his arm and around his neck as he wilts across the stage on his toes. ‘Dare’ is most intriguing – the rhythm on the drum-kit mirrored tactfully by the rhythm on the percussion pad, like a dance between two musicians; racing and entirely riveting cymbals making way for a near celestial climax.

Bombay Bicycle Club canter onto stage so casually (no doubt jet-lagged beyond death), yet quickly manage to produce an atmosphere so fulgent. Beaming, they begin their nineteen-song-set with ‘Overdone’, the ornate Lata/Kishore sample rather incredibly manipulates itself into a palpitating, audacious lilt. The crowd pulses, their arms rise with frontman Jack Steadman’s refrain. An opening so strong that it creates a tight feeling in the chest; perhaps of impatience for what is to come – for this is but only the beginning.

The band glides naturally through their five-year discography. The glorious ‘Lights Out, Words Gone’ is smooth and mellow; a splendid cover of Robyn’s ‘With Every Heartbeat’ is beautifully buoyant, so charming – seemingly original. Bombay’s nascence is represented in the sequence of ‘The Giantess/Emergency Contraception Blues/Lamplight’, played in the same order as they appear on the debut. A little bit nostalgic, the lucid melodies emphasise how the band have evolved, how pleasantly their sound has grown; the maturity and subtle variation on the new record a ready example of this. And of course, the songs from this year’s So Long, See You Tomorrow come alight.

Animated and sprightly, ‘Home By Now’ throbs: warm and rhythmic; and when performed live, touched by the breathy, gossamer vocals of Liz Lawrence, her timbre effortlessly velveteen tête-à-tête.

“Let’s have ourselves a dance party,” – Steadman invites us to the exotic realm of

‘Feel’ and it is bliss. The tone of Jamie McColl’s guitar is indelible in my mind – delightfully rich and illustrious, the shimmering keyboard atop it a peachy blush seeping so euphorically into the crowd, we melt completely.

The main set concludes, fittingly it is with the opiate ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’.

Gracious and cherubic, it brings a looming sense of closure, a sentiment of longing. “When you reign down / Lights fall” – in distant unison, the band sing this slow ritornello; here, a lulling xylophone and reedy synth are soothing, cathartic.

We expect maybe a dimming lullaby, we expect anything but this sudden and grand burst of energy.

We expect anything but the resilient spirit in Steadman as something mesmeric germinates; as he taps a snare drum and then a floor-tom, as Liz clutches at a tambourine, as bassist Ed Nash jumps high on his feet, as a cowbell rings. Everyone is in the air and an abundance of relished feeling is just frolicking, building and building until it fades – but not quite. So we begin again, “we go round and round and round”. We revel.

Bombay Bicycle Club return to a piping crowd with little delay and together we sweat in the grimy whir of ‘Carry Me’. Steadman’s unmistakable vocals, for a final time, swim into a concordant veil of guitars. His own is cosmic, it tremolos into the night, a party in this purple and blue haze. We feel as light as empty space. The atmosphere is at last white-hot, body upon body, sound upon sound. An abyss of life.

Review by Jessica Syed

Photos by Roger Ma view more here

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