ALGIERS
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Wed 3 July
In his excellent book Detroit ‘67, Stuart Cosgrove narrates a turbulent year in the lives of both Berry Gordy’s Motown label and Motor City itself. Rising racial tensions resulted in rioting, the metaphorical flames having been fanned by incidents of police brutality. Martha & The Vandellas’ Dancing In The Streets became the civil rights movement’s unofficial anthem as protest and violence engulfed the city that summer – but the title track of Algiers’ second LP would have been even more appropriate. The press release’s claim that The Underside Of Power “finds a glorious midpoint between Suicide and The Temptations” may have seemed fanciful, but it was absolutely on the money.
Even though it’s no longer 1967, times have hardly changed – which is precisely why Algiers are so utterly vital. Franklin James Fisher deals not in nebulous, commodifiable angst but righteous fury, offering a bleak vision of black experience in Trump’s America, while those behind him – Lee Tesche, Ryan Mahan and former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong – create a dizzyingly inventive fusion of gospel, post-punk, soul and dystopian industrial electronics. Arguably their closest cousins, TV On The Radio, sound tame and one-dimensional by comparison.
Algiers arrive at Clwb with a forthcoming third album under their collective belts, one whose ingredients (they suggest) sound “like the start of a really brutal joke told to Republicans at a bar on the Jersey Shore”: “A metal/soundtrack producer/musician wunderkind, a prodigy punk rock producer/musician and Algiers walk into a bar. They burn it down.” We wouldn’t expect anything less.
Tickets: £11. Info: 029 2023 2199
words Ben Woolhead