Other Lives – St Giles Church, London 21/11/11

With 2011′s sleeper hit album under their belts – you may not know it, but just watch – Other Lives have witnessed an organic development that’s more than they could ever have dreamt when they set out.

They’re positioned for all of the tickboxes, but it’s not fair to blame them as it’s surely not by design; broadsheets and the ‘tastemaker’ mags like Q and Mojo will be all over this, leaving just the depressingly inevitable Later…with Jools appearance. Like I say, it’s not their fault though.

But beyond the mediums employed by fairweather enthusiasts too lazy to make any proper effort trying to find interesting new music, the kerfuffle around the album ‘Tamer Animals’ is entirely deserved. And in this grandest and most fitting of buildings the buzz is tangible, with Jesse Tabish and his gang of hairy buggers walking on to levels of adulation that are usually reserved for the conclusion.

Their last London show, hilariously, was as support to one of 2011′s epic fails – Chapel Club, should anyone remember them – at the Shepherds Bush Empire, and their 30-minute slot was beset with a bass-heavy mix that submerged the fragile beauty of their material. But we wrote that off as the perils of big venues and resident sound engineers, and all that.
Naively, it seems – because once again tonight the balance is all to cock, and that’s apparent immediately – admittedly nowhere near to the same suffocating levels as SBE, but the acoustics at St Giles probably render such a fug impossible anyway.

So maybe it’s how they like it, who knows, though their triumphant End of The Road appearance – where they sounded nothing less than magical – suggests not. It doesn’t ruin the show by any means, and with many you suspect witnessing Other Lives for the first time as the whispers grow louder they’d struggle to subdue the expectation and lust anyway.

Album highlights – not least title track ‘Tamer Animals’ – sound as vital as ever, and they’re frighteningly compact for a band still in their nursery years.
At times indeed it’s as overwhelming as they are on record if not more so, and, as they fish for available material to perform they unwittingly deliver perhaps the most memorable moment – a breathtaking solo number from frontman Tabish which opens their encore.

Though it’s not as perfect as the album still sounds every time, there’s no doubting that Other Lives are an exceptional band and one of 2011′s true discoveries.