Warpaint + Fiction London Scala 28/10/10
5/5
By: Toby L
WARPAINT SET LIST: 'Warpaint' / 'Stars' / 'Composure' / 'Undertow' / 'Beetles' / 'Set Your Arms Down' / 'Bees' / 'Burgundy' / 'Elephants' / ENCORE: 'Majesty' / 'Billie Holiday'
Twelve months ago, the salubriously attired Fiction were even more jerky and frenetic. Now they've restrained themselves enough to fit a similar realm to that of Wild Beasts' drifting, rhythmic, melodic dream rock, resembling at times a pop Young Marble Giants. A strobey light show, full Scala, and onlooking The XX, and suddenly the jaunty keyboard refrain of 'Big Things' seems to live up to its title. For a support slot, it's a hugely enticing and proficient display, but tonight is of course all about Warpaint.
After years of kicking around, Warpaint are seriously getting their shit together. In the last twelve months, since that astonishing debut EP, the knockout SXSW appearances, and enough online column inches to break an iPad, things have developed at hurtling pace for the four prog-rocking ladies from LA. The main progression, however, is the live show. At the band's rockfeedback-promoted, debut UK performance at The Lexington pre-summer, an hour of beauteous, ramshackle stoner jams bounced across the box room like a euphoric series of slow motion headbutts. Now, in the week of debut album release The Fool, the same effect is conjured, albeit with an additional onstage swagger and engagement that sees them casually becoming stars.
'You have no idea how excited we are to be here,' singer/guitarist Emily Kokal purrs to the industry hordes/whores and genuine nuts fans, many of whom scream throughout the entirety of the seventy minutes. They're in no hurry, though. Even before playing, they loiter around their performance space for what seems hours, checking leads and amps. Meandering. Like their eventual splash into sound – which is a whirlpool of reberb-y vocals and delay guitar. It quickly becomes apparent that the only punchy thing about the quartet is Jenny Lee Lindberg's pulsating bass lines.
After a mesmerising 'Stars', we're greeted with, 'This song is 'Composure',' and the amusing, contradictory request: 'Feel free to lose your shit.'
The band certainly does. After wrestling around with the wall of sensual noise, Theresa Wayman and Lindberg fret over sound issues, peering confusedly at the leads and amps that had been so meticulously inspected earlier on. This leaves Emily and insanely talented drummer Stella Mozgawa to ad lib and jam out a loose section of the song. Then they sort the technical crap out, collectively regain it and return with more ferocity than first attempted. It's this kind of genius comeback, the welcoming of abandon, that makes Warpaint so critical right now; so few that immerse themselves in something so brittle and majestic embrace such chaos and make it somehow wholly vital to the performance.
Our next highlight is 'Undertow' – surely one of the singles of the year. Innocent, melodic and featuring ensconcing group-sung vocals, Mozgawa signals its close with a gripping drum solo. Gripping drum solo. I mean, who else would we allow get away with such a thing, let alone allow it to consume us? It's at this point I imagine Warpaint out at sea, siren-like, welcoming lost voyagers into the abyss, with their alluring voices and eerie guitar lines.
Then the fantasy is broken up almost instantly by someone behind me.
'I LURVVE SWAARPEAINT,' bellows a huge, sweaty Scottish man, who's grinning his face into a crease that threatens to swallow me whole. I then observe to his right a fight breaking out between two girls in the mosh. What the hell is this band doing to people? Warpaint clearly have a potent and immersing effect on us, and, seemingly, each individual's experience couldn't be more different to the next.
The musicianship throughout is honed, focused, yet loose enough, and the songs rich enough to generate hysteria – best proven by 'Elephants', which closes the show. But despite the intensity of proceedings, Lindberg and Kokal laugh and dance in front of Mogzawa for its breakdown and close. With a final whack of her bass, Jenny walks off last.
Of course, we want more, and the girls tease the crowd of a possible encore by rapidly opening and shutting the onstage dressing room door. Stella then knocks out a kick drum, gets the room clapping, and another lazy jam is kicked out. It ends in calamity and laughter. 'We have no idea what we are doing,' they claim. Well, it still sounded amazing.
We soon reach our lullaby close – a sing-along 'Billie Holliday', which envelopes into a thunderous cacophony. It signals our begrudging time to depart and return to the world.
Entirely surprising, dizzyingly desirable, the only thing more exciting than right now with Warpaint, is the thought of what they're going to throw our way next. And that's why they're the greatest new band on the planet right now: brimming with ideas, they're precariously hovering on the cusp of genius. Other groups out there, seriously, take note, and sort it out.
Artists in this article: Warpaint, Fiction
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