Blonde Redhead w/ Porcelain Raft – Shepherds Bush Empire, London 30/09/10

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Porcelain Raft

Porcelain Raft: not a life-saving flotation device. In a way this was a shame, as the Biblical rain outside suggested Shepherd’s Bush would be under 10 foot of water by the time tonight’s show had finished, but whilst Mauro Remeddi would be pretty useless in a flooding scenario, he’s certainly a dab hand at fuzzed-out indie loveliness. Unlike many of his peers, he’s reluctant to settle into one predictable groove, at times going for hazy, claustrophobic minimalism, at others shifting into more traditional synth-pop territory, maintaining the same high quality throughout. Yes, there’s moments where his vocals let him down (he’s better at instrumentals), but as chillwave performances go, this is pretty impressive stuff.

Blonde Redhead

Pitchfork’s assessment of Blonde Redhead‘s new LP Penny Sparkle as “profoundly boring” may be a little harsh, but it’s hard to deny at times it feels like the veteran dream-popsters are going through the motions; a feeling not entirely dispelled by their live show. It’s perfectly competent, reasonably energetic…but nothing more. Kazu Makino’s vocals are always a delight, but the lack of volume and a surplus of bass reverb meant they were swamped under the guitars; the stage design is doubtlessly effective, but is more than a little derivative of Fever Ray (replace the flickering light bulbs with lamps and buy a few more masks and you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.) Whilst shoegaze has never demanded much dynamism from its performers, Blonde Redhead’s reliance on backing tracks highlights the lack of vitality that besets the show at times, and even The Big Hit (’23′) fails to stir the emotions or the enthusiasm of the crowd as much as one would expect. True, they can still muster up an almighty squall of noise when they want to, but even then the sub-par mixing meant that moments that should have been breathtakingly intense were merely mildly impressive. Subtlety is no sin, but that’s no excuse for aimlessness – a little more focus could have gone a long way.

Photography courtesy of Sebastien Dehesdin