Late of the Pier live review – Brighton Barfly April 9th 2008

This is a review of the Late of the Pier gig which took place at the Brighton Barfly on April 9th 2008. This was part of the Levi’s Ones To Watch tour.

who are late of the pier?

Late of the Pier are a British 4 piece indie-electro band from the Nottingham area. They recently supported Soulwax and their friends Hadouken!, have been remixed by Erol Alkan and are especially popular with teenagers thanks to their policy of playing all-ages venues. On record they come across like a more experimental Hot Chip and are ideal for an electro club.

the music

Late of the Pier sound a little like MGMT, Metronomy and Hadouken! but are still pretty unique sounding. Their music goes all over the place, changing styles rapidly during songs and aping a wide range of bands at various points, from Queens of the Stone Age to ELO, Gary Numan and Muse. The guitars play well against the keyboards and electronic sounds, and the occasional use of unusually large percussion adds to the unique atmosphere.

Whilst the music is great, vocally they sound like any other indie band, and one that can’t sing very well at that. The singer’s style is all over the place, and not in a good way – at times it seems he is attempting to sound like The Strokes, at others a drunk tramp. Unfortunately the vocal-less songs, whilst far superior, didn’t go down well with the younger (majority) elements of the crowd.

3/5

onstage presence and banter

Dressed in typical trendy electro gear the band certainly look the part. There is a lot of effort given to creating a good atmosphere, with lots of movement, some of which might pass for dancing, although the keyboardist constantly took things too far and for the most part ended up looking like he had a mild disorder of some kind. There was a little awkward chat here and there as well; I couldn’t quite understand it though, perhaps in-band jokes.

Things took a turn for the worse in the last track though when the skinny lead singer unnecessarily took his shirt off and started to move into the crowd where teenage girls started grabbing him and the guys tried to take his shoes. There were only about 20 people there and the whole thing seemed very staged. This kind of behaviour is supposed to be spontaneous, tonight it was simply a bit embarrassing.

3/5

sound quality

The singer’s vocals were way too high in the mix – even if they could sing well, which they can’t, the lyrics often drowned out quite interesting sounding music underneath. As it was most tracks sounded like someone singing bad karaoke over some unusual 80’s remixes. This was a shame, since on record they sound a lot better.

Here’s the video of their latest single Bears are coming:

Here’s the same song live

I know you won’t get the same sound live as in a studio, but here it really doesn’t work as well at all.

2/5

the audience

The audience was mostly made up of under 18’s, with a few older couples dotted here and there. The place wasn’t packed, but there were enough younger people to get an electro mosh pit on the go, some short-lived crowd surfing and a little hysteria. Lots of hands in the air, lots of dancing, but only for the first five rows.

Unusually the audience didn’t react well to the instrumental numbers, and I’m sure from looking at the set list one of those was intended to close before the encore. No one clapped, so the band just played the encore straight anyway. I could be wrong about this though.

3/5

overall

Forgetting about the less good support from The Displacements and Collapsing Cities, the night wasn’t too bad. Get rid of the vocals, or improve the existing ones, and Late of the Pier might be able to appeal to more than the under 21’s. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being a band for teenagers, and this is far better than a lot of stuff out there for the underage crowd. It will be interesting to see where this band goes; I suspect one album wonders, but who knows.

3/5

more late of the pier

To listen to more Late of the Pier – and I recommend you do, they sound better on record than they do live – check out their myspace.

The official Late of the Pier site is a suitably retro 90’s website with an 80’s look. It has a few videos, some news and lyrics.

For more gigs like this try the Levis Ones to Watch tour.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 10:58 am and is filed under Brighton Gig Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.