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There’s a certain thrill in knowing that what you’re
seeing is balanced on the very real precipice of abject
failure, but through some inexplicable kink of fate
stays on its feet. I only need offer up The Libertines
for illustration. But for Hope of the States,
the uniformed Chichester rabble who drowned the smaller
stages of the summer’s festivals in dramatic warmth
and achievement, such a ragged position is at disjointed
odds with what we had presumed was a certainty. And
that can’t all be explained away by us not being of
this earth on previous encounters. Neither were they,
they were of the stars, a rough intergalactic ripple,
and they lifted you up there with them. But as tonight’s
set opens straight into a flat cacophony of snap-brittle
guitars and halfway-up-the-staircase-wheezing fiddle,
with a vocal corpse banging against a sorry mix that
you can hear yourself blow your nose over (fact), they
resign into a dive, burn up, crash down to earth and
barely leave a dent. Shame.
Everything’s not quite it its right place. When every
possible setting is primed to apocalypse-frickin’-right-now-please
(the marching beats, tense tangles of post-something
sound, the imposingly doomy visuals, and primarily the
vintage pseudo-military regalia that though done to
a messy trench-based death recently really suits them)
to see it all scattered in the wind is like learning
for the first time we didn’t actually land on the moon
in ’69 (we didn’t, do some research) and that fiction
can masquerade as educated fact. But some days it seems
you are just fighting against the proverbial torrent
of the slipstream. And boy does Sam Herlihy look like
he has been (that’s in addition to the state of his
mop). Visibly flustered, he says at the end of the set
that he doesn’t want to make excuses. Then does.
But we’re inclined to believe him. And the reason for
that is not only because we desperately crave a band
who can meld something fittingly crater-causing from
the aspects they clearly have in their possession, but
because we know they can. That their flirtation with
A Silver Mt Zion-esque post-rock soundscapes is just
that, a flirtation, an ode to, a route of choice, is
what saves them from falling into the void when the
ground loosens around them. If they aren’t what they
should be yet, and sadly they don’t quite seem it tonight,
they do have their sturdy fulcrum in a set of heartfelt
songs of emotional liberation. Their signature ‘Black
Dollar Bills’ for example, even in tonight’s flimsy
state, can’t help but be beautiful, affecting and powerful,
pounding heavy keys somewhere in-between ‘Goddess On
A Highway’ and ‘Karma Police’.
Sam’s face, his frantic/passive demeanour and his friendly
murderer’s eyes say a lot about where they are now.
Trapped in the wind tunnel of a major label, picked
up by Sony on new-Radiohead promise after just one amazing
limited-edition self-released single and minimal touring
and hurled through a ridiculous couple of months that
climaxed in a raggedy Top of the Pops appearance
(I mean, a Top of the Pops appearance!?) aired a few
hours before this end-of-tour gig. The cracks are clearly
showing already, which from some perspectives may not
bode well. But if he handles it, and you feel in his
own way he just might, the presence he’s already formed
could blow right open into something uneasy and alluringly.
Things do finally, thankfully come together – up to
a peak worth standing on – with an incredible closing
double of ‘Last Picture Show’ and the single ‘Enemies/Friends’,
which busts right out of the slightly muffling constraints
it was put onto record under. He says they won’t play
the latter again after tonight and as gorgeous as it
is we hope he means it. They need to take back their
terms and push themselves forwards. There’s a whole
mass of unspoilt territory for the taking and they’re
right on the cusp.
Relevant sites:
www.ulu.lon.ac.uk/
Relevant Sites:
www.spiritualized.com/
www.roadmender.org/
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2003©
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