Great Hall, Cardiff University Students Union
Sun 13 Feb
words: ALEX TURNER photos: SIMON AYRE
Heading out for the 2011 NME tour, it’s refreshing to have no clue how the night is going to work. The line-up might have a knocked-up-at-random feel, but it’s clear that someone at the mag has decided the time has come to stop getting criticised for fielding endless identikit white boys with guitars.
Fittingly the band best answering this description, The Vaccines, are by a country mile the dullest act tonight. Standout points: guitarist takes off hat, reveals curls. An amped-up version of the Standells’ Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White that might sound fresh if Minor Threat hadn’t got there first, 30 years ago. Otherwise it’s straight-up schmindie, tight and slightly punky but utterly pedestrian.
Off the back of this, Everything Everything seem guaranteed to grab the attention, but their proggy indie-funk holds up well on its own merits. Technical and fussy it may be, but they look sharp, sing nice harmonies, and roll out enough sly hooks and taut basslines to persuade the crowd to get its shuffle on. That’ll do.
One stereotypical description of dubstep involves mentioning tension and release. It’s fair to say that Magnetic Man kicked the “tension” part of that to the kerb some time ago. The scene is, surreally, more Download than DMZ as sweaty teens mosh to the precision-tooled onslaughts of Mad and I Need Air, but it’s one likely to be repeated across festivals this summer.
And so to Crystal Castles. The duo have lost some sharp edges recently, but a monolithic wall of synth-bass ensures that the tumbling 8-bit melodies of Crimewave and Intimate sound absolutely immense, as well as like proper, fully formed pop songs. Occasional gaps in the vicious strobes reveal there’s still zero compromise from Ethan Kath on his hood up, head down stance, while Alice Glass remains a kinetic, scary frontwoman despite being restricted by crutches. At the end of a rather wonky night, the headliners at least make perfect sense.
