The climax of another scorching hot day in Manchester brings me to the Life Café, where the heaving crowd grows steadily by the second, swelling the air of expectation along with it. THE ORGAN’s seven-date tour seems small enough to make every interested party aware of the need to catch this intense and intent all-girl outfit in action. The bodies out in force offer no respite from the mini-heatwave. The adoration comes in waves also, from the front to the back of a largely female audience given temporary respite from the pre-judgmental mainstream; the attraction has its symbolic sides and is all the more powerful for it.
Fittingly, the opening number celebrated liberty and could have been written for this audience, relaxed though it already was. Musically, the concoction was dense and atmospheric, delivered with trademark intensity.
Escalating bass notes left THE organ to its own low devices, driving each tune on with booming, pumping rhythms. Such atmospherics throw the tunes and their increasing melodic content spiralling out towards you as Katie Sketch’s eerie and prophetic narrative hits you from the heart of its sincere and powerful eyes-closed delivery. Stone-faced, half-spaced, two-thirds sincere, the group winds its spell around chorus-heavy guitar and Shelby Stocks’ monolithic drum patterns until it’s difficult to tell who’s tuning into who?
Three songs into the set, and if it doesn’t seem any clearer, it is making perfect, passionate sense. Sketch keeps her eyes so tight shut that the mental pictures described in her lyrics seem to revert back to their visual states behind her lids. Psychedelic oil-on-water colour schemes spring to mind, inverted rainbows, and also, amazingly, perfect clarity.
‘Memorise The City’ is thrown out with some velocity, and ‘Steven Smith’ with just as much intensity. One by one the songs hit you like warm waves and adulation pours from the soul like a teenage kick in this unnatural heat.
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Only at the end, at the realisation of a job well done do we see the band exchange brief smiles – the shattered ear-to-ear grins separating the rest of the set from their triumphant encore. Sketch looks both relieved and overjoyed as she clings to a ¾ size guitar, upon which she rattles out a rhythm to the ping of the high keys splashed across the beat. High hat pedal driven and hand-held percussion hold the fort as the guitar’s melody slip-slides atop the heaviest of bass riffs. I see the crowd mill and weave in time to this concoction through Life Café’s 45-degree polished sheet metal angled above the stage, the dull reflection serving as a mirror that affords a view from the bar to the backs of their heads. I watch the slightly-framed singer with some fascination as once more she screws her eyes tight shut and clutches at her scalp.
The audience reaction is full of awe, everywhere you look are open mouths and stunned expressions. The heat and humidity further the angst, but the wandering melancholy of the songs were underscored with quite beautiful melodies throughout a set that seemed short, but doesn’t it always when it’s been this absorbing? Quality, not quantity I remind myself again, and it seems to sum up the depth of this gig perfectly. Their music hangs heavy on the heart, but alienates no-one. In line with the great live performers, they have shown us an extra dimension to their recorded work. If your jury is out on this Vancouver five-piece, then your final decision must rest with their capacity to hold an audience spellbound. It’s been an education in the presence of greatness.
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