To My Boy - A boat on The Mersey, Liverpool - 19/10/07
5/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
There are a few gigs that will stick in my mind until I die, and for some reason most of them have happened this year; the magic of Patrick Wolf back in March, the eccentric energy of British Sea Power in May, the majesty of Bright Eyes over the summer. But now, as the year's coming to an end, I encounter maybe the most exciting live event of my 2007 in the shape of two guys, two guitars and a computer.
They are To My Boy, and for a minute there I consider that I might not be worthy of breathing the same air. Such thoughts have escaped my pen a lot in as many months, but anybody who has been fortunate enough to see this outstanding breakthrough act will surely agree. They take an experimental (emphasis once again on the mental) guitar sound and play it over punchy vocals with sub-beats thumping in the background, but this small band somehow create the whole 'collective' vibe with just two guys and a sh*t load of dancing. When they came on stage to support the horribly average Wombats at their album launch aboard a boat on the River Mersey I didn't hold much hope, but within 20 seconds I had undoubtedly the biggest grin of my life on my face. I was like a child stuck on a rollercoaster at Alton Towers, scared sh*tless but having too much of a good time to get off, never knowing when it would end. The songs are instant and unashamedly, deliberately pop, but the delivery is a frenzied bloodlust of pandemonium, dancing and running around with body jerking and head bopping with such conviction they must have sprained something. It was all so delightfully robotic I question their mortality.
Dancing to 'I Am xRAY' made me forget the fact I'm terrified of open water as I let loose with body pops I didn't know I was capable of performing, moving to this exciting sound that had never crossed my ears before. How have I lived this long without having seen these two men play their music? Can I even call it living now I've tasted these wonderful, fast paced and un-human like fruits?
'Tell Me Computer' sums up in its opening 20 seconds what (We Are) Performance have been trying to do for years in Manchester and it's weird to think that such musical genius, and I mean that word to its full description, has come out of Liverpool, a city now associated with so-so bands like tonight's headliners, The Wombats. The music itself is laced with uber-retro-80s facades an is hardly doing anything new, even if it is doing it at speeds quicker than anybody else. The miraculous pull of this ear-gasmical outfit is that of the live show, the sheer level of sweat and pace that goes into it, two men doing more damage to mediocrity than most seven or eight piece divisions could fathom.
You can't stand in the audience and not be moved by To My Boy. They're too good to brush off. Insomniacs beware! They've severely damaged my existence forever. I'm off to dance to 'I am xRAY' alone in my underwear, for the next four to five weeks.
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