These people are mad for a bit of history. The legend “Antarctic – November 12, 1912” appears projected on to the back wall and applause erupts in a manner ecstatic enough to suggest either that UKTV History is having a bad night in the ratings, or that there are a disproportionately high number of dyslexic Arctic Monkeys fans in. Seeing as we find ourselves at an iLiKETRAiNS gig, it turns out to be neither. It in fact represents the date and location, the historical coordinates if you will, of famed explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed trek to the South Pole. That in turn represents the content of ‘Terra Nova’, one of the academic post-rockers’ most treasured early works. It is a biting whirlwind of regret and anguish, delivered with a thrillingly muscular surge, playing the loud/quiet/etc card to perfection. The pre-emptive reaction is entirely justified.  They are here to support a brand new record – their full length debut ‘Elegies To Lessons Learnt’ – but even though nothing on it really matches the pure terror of ‘Terra Nova’ (save for perhaps the alarming 10 minute Prime Ministerial assassination epic ‘Spencer Percival’, which makes an impressive go of it) the intensity never wanes, they are weighted forward following a natural creeping momentum and their unrepentantly formal, looming delivery stokes the omnipresent tension like the cold claws at your chest on an icy night. The tone is, to say the least, sewn up, and the consistency so militant that you rarely dare doubt its integrity.
They are uniformed as you might expect (as most bands of their ilk are), not eccentrically so, just enough to keep parameters in check; black trousers, white shirt, black arm band. It helps hold them, and the tales of historical woe from which their songs are built, in character. The only thing that threatens to cut through this well appropriated façade is that they allow themselves (their modern selves) to talk to the audience in between songs, and in doing so just seem like A Band. It’s hardly txt-msg-tlk though and it’s a relief that frontman David Martin happens to be droll and articulate enough not to let this completely ruin a perfectly good set up. It is he too that gives their tales legs in a physical setting; his studied facial expressions, the loaded rolls of his eyes – capable of projecting ire, fear or frailty to the back of a theatre – and solemn, weighty sighs offer a further peep-hole to the soul of these songs. He’s as many parts actor as he is lead singer. Interpol’s stylish gothic depression is as continuous a reference point live as it is on record, but where the heavyweight New Yorkers can come unstitched on stage, emitting a hollow approximation of their grander selves, iLiKETRAiNS seem tonight more than capable of piling on assurances, as if they’re restricted by the constraints of recording – even though any differences are understated. These songs just seem to benefit from breathing room. They’ve got some of the unflinching class of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds worked in too, and a whole load of Explosions In The Sky’s bluster, which goes some way to solidifying the drama. If any band has been handicapped by the recent ban on smoking in public places, robbing them of the atmospheric enhancements afforded by a pungent fug (the closest they’d get to the musky filth of the medieval streets from whence some songs came without enlisting a museum’s scent technician – and they must be scant), then it is they. But the band’s performance is so powerful that the suggestion (and of course the buckets and buckets of dry ice) really does suffice. Relevant sites:
www.iliketrains.co.uk
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2007© |
