Chvrches – Kentish Town Forum, London 14/03/14

Chvrches are no strangers to a sold-out Forum – they’ve played here before, supporting Passion Pit at the end of 2013. That was back in the days when the band had only unveiled two tracks online, “Lies” and “The Mother We Share”, but both were still good enough to send the blogosphere loopy.

Since then a lot has changed – between a spot on the BBC Sound of 2013 shortlist and a top ten album, Chvrches’ lush neon-pop has become an all-conquering force. Tonight they walk out to another sold out Forum crowd, but this time it’s all for them.

Soak, aka seventeen-year-old Bridie Monds-Watson, is tonight’s support, a task made all the more unenviable by the fact she’s an acoustic artist playing to 2,300 people who have turned up wanting to rave on a Friday night. Undoubtedly, being signed to Chvrches’ label Goodbye Records will take her so far – it got her this gig after all – but it’s her arrestingly candid finger-plucking and pixie-cute voice that will take her the rest. “Blud” and “Sea Creatures” display the sort of sparse, precocious vulnerability that will have Laura Marling fans foaming at the mouth. Sadly it isn’t going to do Soak any favours tonight – the masses gathered here have come to dance.

And dance they do, even if Chvrches front woman Lauren Mayberry steadfastly refuses to. “Sorry I just don’t,” she shrugs half-apologetically; impervious to the effect the band’s electronic crescendos are having on the crowd. Instead it’s become part of the mass of contradictions that make up Chvrches’ emotional makeup: in the same way they make glorious pop music that masks darker intentions – Mayberry sounds her sweetest tonight when goading “It’s you I’ll come for, I’m gonna see that you won’t come far” on “Gun” – this is disco music made by a band whose chanteuse would rather stand, silhouetted by dazzling shape-shifting lights, clutching a mic stand, looking awkward and exposed. Luckily though, the tumbling synths of “We Sink” and jarring bassline on “Lungs”, the soaring chorus of dance floor banger “Lies”, and the warm bubbling immediacy of “Gun” help to fill the space around her.

It’s difficult to believe that debut The Bones of What We Believe was released less than six months ago – these songs seem so entrenched in this room’s collective consciousness. Still technically a new bunch of songs, Chvrches should be able to bask in their success, but you can’t help but think things are moving too fast for the band to be given that gestation period. Tonight they play almost every track on the album, including the rarely heard M83-aping “You Caught the Light”, yet their set is still shy of an hour – too short for a headline show. And while the band have released a spate of covers – Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know”, Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and Haim’s “Falling” – in recent months, they don’t call on them to bolster their set.

Tonight is undoubtedly a triumph, but you feel it’s unlikely Chvrches are going to be able to enjoy the moment – they’re a band still realising their own potential. But as their popularity and the venues and crowds increase at breakneck speed, their own rapid ascendency has got them running to catch up.

• Photo by Wunmi Onibudo. See the full set here.