Poliça – Heaven, London 20/11/12

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Photograph by Siamak Amini

The touts seem confused. “Pol-eee-ca”. “Pol-iit-za”. Even a particularly bizarre, “tickets for the Police!” were amongst the attempts heard on the way to Heaven. Of course it could be that they were paying homage to Poliça’s brand of Auto-Tuned vocal manipulation, but then again it’s probably that if you stick a cedilla under a letter everyone goes to pieces.

Autotune has a bad name. And rightfully so. Its existence is a pointless waste of human endeavour: if you can’t sing, don’t sing. Don’t use a machine to convert your tuneless wail into something vaguely in key and then claim to be an amazing vocalist. It doesn’t happen with any other instruments. There is no device that you plug into your trumpet and ensures you play like Miles Davis even if you have fingers like chipolatas after a horrific encounter with a mangle.

Although, maybe it depends on your usage. Kanye West? Not so much. Making songs from news reports? Please, almighty Christ, make it stop. Poliça’s way, not as a tool to gloss over imperfections, but as a method of discombobulation to leave you wondering if you’re listening to a cross between Elizabeth Fraser and Buck Roger’s faithful companion Twiki, well that, as the entomology Professor said to his class, has legs.

Live, while not quite as pronounced as on their debut (Give You The Ghost), it is still the most memorable thing about them. Leaneagh’s cries shifting, reflecting, rebounding and modulating all over the brick walls, chilling your bones and yet warming your heart. It is their greatest weapon. She can resemble a glassy Beth Gibbons, she can echo a pixie-ish Bjork, and it pushes their downbeat, R&B tinged electronica into alien, and downright interesting, places.

Or at least, it does at times. The storming opener ‘Happy Be Fine’ and a defiant ‘Dark Star’ are both examples of Poliça at their best – enthralling, deep and irresistible. But it isn’t enough to prevent parts of tonight from being a little dull. About midway through the set things start to drag and all the signal processing in the world can’t stop tracks slipping into the background.

The gig meanders. For too long. Large sections of the performance are slightly perfunctory. The two drummers and bassist are completely able, but they don’t always seem able to recreate the emotional peaks and troughs that made Give You The Ghost as appealing as a pail full of kittens.

After the dip it isn’t until a lovely ‘Wandering Star’, synth wheezing like an asthmatic accordion, that you get properly drawn back in. And to be fair, you do remain there until the end. It’s not flawless, but there is sufficient here to suggest that given time Poliça could be as compelling a live act as they are on record. They just aren’t quite there yet.