Esben and The Witch - The Hobby Horse, London 04/02/10

Their mission – to make “intriguing, ambitious and innovative music” (the words of lead singer Rachel Davies, interviewed late last year on this very website) – involves an indulgent foray into the extemporaneous.

The props that bedeck the boxy stage tonight – a skull, wooden owl, globe and several dusty lamps – transcend mere artifice or whimsy. They’re an attempt to create something cohesive – both a figurative and physical ‘room’ in which the audience is both observer and participant.

Yet grabbing the audience and holding them in the palm of your hand – from the moment you step onstage – and leave them wanting more is a difficult move to pull off. It’s made even harder when electronic instruments falter, there’s an absent microphone and the noise from the back of the room exceeds that onstage. These are the terrible trials that beset Esben and the Witch tonight at The Hobby Horse, one of the recent boho haunts that’s responsible for the joojing-up of Kingsland Road.

Thus, an extended sound check stumbles without warning into the set and whispery sound levels barely register to those stuck at the back of the room. Esben, nevertheless, soldier on, delivering a shaky-at-first performance that hits par only a couple of songs in. It’s more than one might expect under such extenuating circumstances and frustration is outed when the trio of performers – Davies and her musical partners Daniel Copeman and Thomas Fisher – emerge around the solitary drum and cymbal that sits centre stage and proceed to bash the living hell out out of it.

In the middle of the chaos, they play killer tune “Marching Song”, the centrepiece of free mini album 33 (a record that kept me going through the misery of Xmas and well into the New Year). The record is a perfect representation of what makes them such an appealing proposition: Rachel’s magnificent, febrile hollering building to crescendo over escaping guitars and a stuttering percussion. It’s easy to box them as the missing link between the Banshees and Portishead but there’s a richer mix in the works than such a comparison might suggest. Appealing elements of the pastoral and a theatrical streak colour every part of their personality, both musical and intellectual.

Their set at The Hobby Horse ends with something of a whimper and there’s no applause. We are an audience disarmed, expecting a track or two more and hearing something akin to an intro that might be Esben but could also be the DJ. There’s silence for a few moments as the band sit down in front of us and start unplugging instruments and winding up cables. All of a sudden it feels very British – we realise it’s over, we want to applaud but the moment has passed. And they didn’t even play their somber, mephistophelean reworking of Kylie’s ‘Confide in Me’, which I was kinda hoping they would.

Was their confidence shaken tonight? I think so – they punched far below their weight, through no fault of their own. Still, there were hints of the power, intrigue and near magic they have on record – a testimony to the strength of their songs, especially in the face of such adversity.