Pink Floyd met The Doors in a fitting hybrid through opener Glass Moths. The young band verged on masturbatory homage but ultimately came off as a charming nod to the 60s and all things trippy. Indie 5-piece, The Proper Ornaments lived up to their rigid title, barely moving or showing a hint of emotion throughout a disappointingly generic set, in an attempt to revive a dead brand of half baked rock that nobody really misses.
It’s not often you get hassled about not dancing at a shoegaze gig, unless the common action of staring at your shoes is in fact considered dancing. It’s like asking people to sit down and drink sip tea at a Death Grips gig. A group who resembled Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno thought a TOY gig at The Cluny was the best place to show off their moves. “What’s wrong with everyone?!”, one bearded bloke shouted, as he awkwardly shuffled his Topman moccasins left and right on the packed staircase, to impress a girl. It was like a scene taken straight from ‘Matty 4:1’ of the LAD Bible.
Thankfully, the whole thing didn’t distract too much from the reason why everyone was actually there; the straight-faced gothicness of the headliners, who were busy tearing down the walls of the venue with their dark and intense take on psychedelic krautrock, It was an ear-ringing set led by the crowd pleasing riffs and energy of ‘Motoring’ and the Baroque-pop splendour of ‘Heart Skips A Beat’. As the band delved into earlier material like ‘Left Myself Behind’ and the more self-indulged expansion of their latest album’s title track ‘Join The Dots’, the roof felt like it was about to collapse in on itself.
Everything seemed to melt together into one big, powerful force. Tom Dougall’s enigmatic lyrics and almost nonchalant vocals, coupled with the glowing walls of synth from the fingers of Alejandra Diez, makes for something quite special. Seeing a band freely improvise their material live to make it sound endless and immortal is also something to behold, a luring attraction. I might not have been doing the rain dance of my fellow LADs, but my mind was certainly making shapes.
Words: Nad Khan
Photo: Jill O'Donnell
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