Florence And The Machine, The Drums & Babe Shadow Hammersmith Apollo, London 13/5/10
4/5
By: Roxy Fisher
The first to take on Thursday night’s excitable West London audience were the new, very lovely recent Club Rockfeedback stars Babe Shadow. Having only emerged in their entirety six months ago, main men Tom Cawte and David Thornley have been busy working up some pretty catchy tunes with the help of new members, Mark Thorne and Sam Nadel on bass and drums respectively.
Cawte’s vocals combined with the tropical sounding guitar and syncopated percussion is reminiscent of Vampire Weekend’s debut album – particularly evident on ‘Sea Serpents’, which will become their first proper release later this month. Cawte, the multi instrumentalist, skipped from guitar to accordion to keyboard and, although on occasion something was lost in translation as they tried to fill the daunting space of Hammersmith Apollo, the acoustic summer party vibe never tired.
It’s testament to the size of Miss Welch’s machine these days that a second support act was called for… and who better than rising stars The Drums? All the way from Brooklyn the quartet put on a trademark cocky-yet-brilliant performance, belting out favourites such as ‘Down By The Water’ and ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ with unrivalled energy. Sounding a little like Philip Oakey at times, lead singer Jonathan Pierce paraded across the stage with so much confidence that we occasionally wondered if he’d be disappointed to find out in fact Florence was headlining.
There was, however, no conceivable doubt whose night this was when Florence and the Machine took to the stage. Orchestra, backing singing fleet and harp in position, Flo emerged from a silver orb cloaked in black and waving a drumstick like a wand over the crowd. No need for spells though, as she worked her way through debut album Lungs, performed brand new track ‘Strangeness And Charm’ and closed up with ‘Kiss With A First’, after a heartfelt and deserved thank you to this fine supporting cast.
Artists in this article: Florence & The Machine, The Drums, Babeshadow
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