Snatched Melody: GENTS, Live in London

08 October 2017, 10:43 | Written by Tom Hocknell

(Live)

With their high jeans and Baldrick-from-Blackadder haircuts it’s hard to imagine a more Dalston band, but GENTS are from Denmark, and peddle the sort of wistful dream-pop that shuns irony by aiming straight for the heart. They’re a classic synth duo, with singer Niels Fejrskov Juhls adding guitar to unfeasible tall partner Theis Vesterlokke’s synth stabs and ambient washes. They’ve already released an EP, and a stunning album of understated electronica titled About Time earlier this year.

They are frustratingly un-Google-able, but once you get past listings for barbers and a Yorkshire band of the same name you find videos that do little to dispel the sense of ‘80s pastiche, rather than promoting two men with an indelible ear for hypnotic melodies. These songs are sold gold; evergreen classics not yet heard. GENTS are a band that makes you grateful for a broken heart.

The brooding “Brother” has the sort of precise single finger synth riff that Vince Clarke took with him when leaving Depeche Mode, and is typical of their disarming arrangements which sound somehow as familiar as they do otherworldly.

They announce the eminently catchy “Love Is Tears” as an old track from 2015, before the next, a cover that was recorded before they were born, in 1985. The lyrics to the wistful “Bonny” by Prefab Sprout, “I’m lost in heaven and I’m lost to Earth”, suits Niels’ baritone croon perfectly. Prefab were another band who teased listeners with snatched melodies, and it’s become unfashionable to build a groove rather than smash it into the listener’s face with the charm of an irritable gym instructor. GENTS are here to address that.

“Cold Eyes” is all shameless romance and clipped synths; there’s a delicious sadness to these songs that suits the autumn and long Scandinavian winters, with songs built around what they leave out as much as what’s left in. They close with the double whammy of “Lost in the City” and “I Want To Be Free”, the glorious EDM breakdown of the latter providing the relief they’ve flirted with all night. Its lustful euphoria could last for days, but they cruelly keep it short and sweet. If only they didn’t leave you wanting more, but that they say is exactly the point. Few enough bands nail it; even fewer hammer it home with the ease of GENTS. It's the urban blues that never needed guitars. It's as raw and romantic as the Pet Shop Boys in their innocent prime. GENTS are utterly perfect.