TELEPATHE + GLASS ANIMALS
Soup Kitchen, Manchester | September 25th
Despite its name, the Soup Kitchen is not a charitable facility open to aid those cold, hungry and homeless ragamuffins of the Northern Quarter. It’s actually a delightful two-tiered venue featuring a bar/restaurant on ground level (yes, they sell soup), with a robustly built cavern lurking underneath. Tuesday saw Manchester’s music events bastion Now Wave begin another season of refined artillery with a night featuring fresh-out-the-pan Oxford quartet Glass Animals and fiery Brooklyn duo Telepathe.
Soup Kitchen’s live room was desolate as Glass Animals took to the stage, but as soon as the music began to flow the space became filled in what seemed like an instant. They brought a mystic atmosphere to the crowd with a set-up built around a pair of exotic throws that draped their synthesizer stands, transforming the dark, angular room into a kind of enchanted grotto. Performing in a diamond formation provided an attractive focal point, although an unbalanced sound which relied too heavily on sparse drums and vocals left much of the complex instrumentation in the background. In spite of this, they demonstrated the value of their craftsmanship in a tight set which brought the intricate post-garage of recent EP Leaflings to light, before peaking with a new song in an impressive climax.
Telepathe pulled out all the stops with their follow-up as they opened with a momentous, rumbling drum track which perfectly reflected the ferocity of singer Melissa Livaudis. They used the limitations of the soundsystem to their complete advantage, firing out an ear-flooding blend of shoegazey electronica drenched with delayed vocal hooks and direct, engaging grooves. Their full-bodied sound could pass as a guitar-infused and super-charged Purity Ring, although the Brooklyn duo will be swift to point out the years they have on their in-vogue Canadian counterparts. An extended set picked from several years of exciting releases found the full-capacity venue locked in a vibrant and bulbous trance, maintained right until the final notes of their infectiously danceable encore.
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Words: James Balmont
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