I’ve been sober for barely a day, and already the ghosts of the past are circling.
I’ve heard nasty stories about life after ale and rum, when the walls peer in at you like a dangling tube passenger eyeballing your paper, and the lost nightmares of parties past bubble up in your head. But it’s only been 20 hours since I hurled away my wallet in a drunken fog somewhere in Soho, and I’m already being claimed by the demonic synth sirens of the 1980s.
I’d spotted them on the way over here, seeping between the pavement cracks of grey suits, polo shirts and skinny jeans. At the far end of a carriage, the first lizard-tongue lick of a rat mullet would hiss out of a crowd, or a sterile strip light would slink off freshly-dusted blonde frosting. It was the decade we smugly vowed we’d cast away forever, but it’s still at the bottom of the toybox of society’s imagination, waiting to be picked out and played with.
It’s just the way that people work. Buoyed by the evangelical glow of a new style and a new era, we hurl our recent past far into the corner. When the fresh buzz has passed, we’ll sidle up to the crumpled heap again, sniff at it like a twice-worn shirt, and decide that it’s just about clean enough to put on again.
This is possibly why I swear I just heard a band tick briefly into New Order’s Blue Monday without shifting style or breaking into a crooked knowing smile. We’ve played a love-or-hate game with the past, and for the last few years it’s been dawning on us that there’s some pretty neat stuff getting dusty in the closet.
We tell the world we’re eclectic, curious, inclusive, the bionic fusion of 21st century technology with the voices of the past. But are we just walking around in our mother’s old clothes?
It begins with TURBOWEEKEND. The electronic three-piece are the first act out on the Barfly stage for Ones to Watch, the branded talent showcase sponsored by Levi’s. They’re from Copenhagen, a fact confirmed by the light mist of Danish voices whistling from the spot at the back near the bar where gig-goers typically stand during the opening act.
“Can I ask you to move a bit closer please?” mumbles vocalist Silas Bjerregaard, furred over with a light beard and a giant rabbit T-shirt. It’s so quiet that you can literally hear someone say, “Yeah, alright” as the gathering shuffles forward. But the tide is about three or four deep when the band start worrying the floor with a hum of bass.
Born out of a friendship that’s lingered since the 4th grade, Turboweekend are an upbeat dancefloor-filling love-child of eighties electronic-synth icons such as Talk Talk, Tears for Fears and the Pet Shop Boys, chaperoned by the modern addition of an urgent beat that would crush a terminator into mayonnaise. The rhythm section of Martin Petersen and Morten KØie drive the songs forward with a compelling energy. It’s an alluring performance, especially during tracks such as the excellent Trouble Is. In fact, from Silas’ throbbing vocal to the bouncing keyboard of Anders MØller, it’s strangely like watching a living, breathing slick sliver of the recent past during its vibrant youth. This must have been what Marty McFly felt like being chatted up by his teenage mum in 1955.
LUNAR YOUTH claim to be “influenced by the glamorous aesthetic and sound of Roxy Music and the imagist poetry of Arthur Symons”. They’ve also been down the road and stocked up on neck chains and lumberjack shirts and floppy haircuts for this spin under the lights.
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The Londoners appear to be the most straightforward of tonight’s bands, but there’s also something...studied about what’s on show here. They’re essentially the sort of upbeat pop-rock guitar act that you might expect to hear backing a camera advert promising good times on beaches and bouncy castles, with the beguiling shimmery riffs and hopping rhythms of someone like those croaky Canadian Crash Test Dummies. But they’re trying to push this identity somewhere else. On songs such as Peppermint Lounge, singer Simon Berlin contorts his vocals until he’s dragging the vowels along concrete. On certain tracks, it’s almost like he’s trying to create a unique vocal identity that doesn’t quite fit yet, or to mimic an icon that represents where the band wants to be. Songs such as Venus in Blue Jeans whisper of old U2, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and they’re helped along by some confident drumming which gives the band the lion’s share of its current musical personality. They seem like they’re trying to move on from where they are now, and it will be interesting to see exactly where that somewhere is.
MIRRORS take the stage at some point before 10pm to face a swelling crowd. They’re clearly the headline act, because they have a big slideshow with arty clips of spinning hearts and flickering black-and-white portraits. They also get to start their set with white noise, bells and whistles, which you don’t get away with before everyone’s had at least four pints.
I’m currently running on empty, and working on my second flashback.
I first bumped into singer James New about five years ago in venues around Robertson Street in Hastings, popping up in the corners of Harper’s and French’s bars at the helm of a Bexhill act called Mumm-ra. The left-field sound climbed into the nation’s eardrums in a slightly diluted form over a year later, and the band took off around the world with the likes of The Killers.
A year after the split, James finds himself sealed up in a pressed suit and a thin tie, anchoring a band which draws inspiration from the same electronic spring that spawned Mumm-ra’s old tour buddies. Armed with a bank of keyboards, the band ape solemnity, although James appears to be having too much fun juddering on stage to fully embrace the authentic Kraftwerk persona. That, it seems, is where the final act in this trio is headed – into the dark ante-chamber of synth that fed New Order, Gary Numan and Depeche Mode’s more stony-faced moments. Franz Ferdinand and Editors have enjoyed success in recent years from plundering that particular alcove, and there’s no reason that Mirrors can’t do the same. Certain record labels will love their style to bits, but they may need to add a little more of themselves to the mix to get to the next level.
After all, it’s not about what you pull out of the toy box. It’s the games that you play with it that count.
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