Alice woz L8, pissed & fucking brilliant.
Heaven woz erm heaven (shared the vodka lol), Hyde park woz gr8 but roundhouse woz only spoilt by me not being able 2 get near the JACK DANIEL's aaarrrggghhh
Spot on Alice ;-D
++++++
Crystal Castles @ Roundhouse
Crystal Castles
Camden Roundhouse. 15oct10.
If some of the heat created by HEALTH’s tribal, brutal yet oddly ethereal sound and turbulent performance style has dissipated by the time Crystal Castles hit the stage half an hour later, it returns double quick with an en masse surge forward and a swell of bodies eager to wax hectic. It was a bit like this the first time I witnessed the group, at this past July’s Latitude Festival where the bright young things down the front revelled in their frankly mischievous main stage billing between the far more sedate charms of The Maccabees and Belle & Sebastian.
To borrow the phrase John Peel once used to the describe the atmosphere at an early Fall gig (and which often still applies), that Latitude set ‘crackled with malevolence’. Partly this was in terms of the pubescent members of the audience getting a little rowdy and letting off some steam. One young fella was seen walking out of the main throng clutching the remaining half of his glasses to his left eye like a makeshift monocle to find his way out. It was like the watching an indie-fest version of Saving Private Ryan’s opening salvo.
In addition to this, I was hit in the face during that set, not by an empty pint glass or a misplaced shoe, as one might reasonably expect, but by a clear pencil case containing a ruler and Pritt Stick amongst other things. Clearly this was the kids throwing off the trappings of youth; those trappings apparently being metaphored by WH Smith’s ‘Back to School’ stationery promotion. We won’t even get into the fighting that went on. Especially as it was vocalist Alice Glass who was responsible for the punches thrown.
That festival appearance gave them something to confront though, if nothing else then an army of pushchair wielding parents retreating to the back of the arena to boo in relative comfort, and Crystal Castles clearly revel in that situation. Tonight, though, they are most certainly on home turf, with no immediate ‘pricks’ to kick against, so we’re left with Alice’s flouting of the smoking ban as a symbol of defiance.
If anything this desire to be seen as ‘propa nawty’ is the one grating aspect about them, their being too much of an appeal to the vain rebellion of their teenage demographic. The bottle of whisky she staggered around with at Latitude still having a large supermarket security tag on it would be a further example.
Yet there is no denying the energy that comes from Ethan Khan’s barbed electronics, and certainly Christopher Chartrand’s drumming helps to flesh it out beyond the machines for the live presentation. Alice herself stalks the stage like a Spectator cartoonist’s approximation of a heroin enthusiast; not so much ‘death warmed up’ as ‘death repeatedly dipped into a toaster that’s not plugged into the wall’.
Alice’s presence within Crystal Castles as a live act is much more as rabble-rouser than as vocalist which is perhaps just as well as, if we’re honest, she’s not much of a singer really, apart from perhaps on ‘Celestica’, what one might term their concession to balladry. Mind you, barreling about screaming is just the ticket on pieces such as ‘Alice Practice’ and the startling, brilliant ‘Baptism’.
Alice repeatedly leaves the stage to be amongst her people, striding at points across a sea of hands and shoulders, distributing Jack Daniels straight from the bottle to eager, thirsty mouths, like a kind of boozy Jesus.
There is no denying that Crystal Castles know their audience. Equally their audience knows this band has more than enough fuel in the tank for evenings in their company to explode.
ADDENDUM: This article was published also on the Art of Noise and recieved the following comment. Which I think is a fair criticism of my one criticism. Sadly the comment was anonymous so I can’t credit it.
“Truth is Alice probably didn’t know about the smoking ban or the security tag on the whiskey. She just wants to smoke and drink, why must you complicate simple common desires? LOL.”
vanityprojectuk.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/crystal-castles-roundhouse/Due to some ticket switching / organisational issues (Ok, we thought they’d be on way earlier) we manage to miss support bands Team Ghost and Health. I was particularly looking forward to seeing how mental Health would be live (I had their crazy Pitchfork TV ‘Don’t Look Down’ set as an idea of what to expect) but I’ll have to catch them another time.
Crystal Castles appear onstage wreathed in smoke so thick you can barely see the tiny frame of Alice Glass, but as they break into their first song, she emerges from the smoke wearing an oversize hoodie and clutching a bottle of vodka. New single ‘Baptism’ is played second, with Alice seeming to feed off the ecstatic reaction from the audience, and from here on in, she’s as hyperactive as we’ve come to expect.
Producer Ethan Kath remains an intriguing opposite to Glass onstage, hunched over his electronics, hood up, beard obscuring face. He occasionally steps out from behind his equipment to play guitar or provide vocals on some tracks, but he largely remains tied to his synths and drum machines. Their live session drummer obviously stays behind his kit too, but Alice more than makes up for it, catapulting herself from one end of the stage to the other, leaping into the audience, crowd-surfing and hopping up onto the bass drum and bashing crash cymbals all while screaming her lungs out and swigging from various bottles.
Musically, the band are absolutely spot on, so tight that we could well be listening to the record, were it not that the beats, synths and Alice’s vocals sounding even harsher and abrasive live. The sound at The Roundhouse is excellent (quite an achievement when you consider the height of the ceilings) and the mix is punishingly loud, the kick drum and bass hits bludgeoning the audience with a ferocity only matched by Glass’ delivery.
Equally worthy of merit is the excellent light show, strobing and pulsating along to the music, starting with just white flashes but progressing to other colours as the set continues before returning to black & white. The white flashing lights conjured up images of grainy nuclear-bomb test videos, an association I’m sure the band would be pleased with.
Crystal Castles have managed to maintain a certain air of mystery and aloofness around themselves, an approach that suits the obliqueness of their music, creating an air of ‘pure performance’ about their live show. The impression is that of a band only there to play their songs then leave, to entertain but not interact, existing in their own nihilistic headspace. It’s only right at the end of the show that any of them address the audience, with Glass garbling ‘Thank-you London’ through her distorted microphone before she and Kath skulk off stage to a deafening cacophony of electronic feedback. The screeching echoes out across the venue, drawing comparisons to My Bloody Valentine’s (and more recently Yuck’s) end-show habits of propping their instruments up against their amplifiers and letting the feedback ring out. Pure performance, and an incredible one at that.
Posted by Roger Holland at 19:41
Reviewed by Jamie Merrill
Crystal Castles haven't always had the best reputation as a live band; short sets and habitual tardiness have seen to that. But at north London's Roundhouse, Alice Glass (the screaming banshee) and Ethan Kath (the digital wizard) sealed their reputation as a mesmerising stage act, offering their hordes of frenzied teenage fans and ultra-cool hipster admirers a perfectly constructed combination of tripped-out euphoria and menacing digipunk beats to rave to. From Kath's first digital pulse ("Fainting Spells") to Glass's final blood-curdling wail ("Yes/No"), they belted out infectious melodies and all-consuming beats in a brutal assault on the central nervous system. And, two years after their emergence from the Toronto underground with two eponymous albums, it's clear that the noisy duo have lost nothing of their violent zeal and electro exuberance.
Glass is straight out into the crowd as Kath's first pounding beats test the grade-II-listed venue's acoustics to their absolute limit. A more sensual "Courtship Dating" sends her back to the stage to regain her breath before a fireball of ear-piercing shrieks and convulsions ("Air War") catapult her into the crowd again. But not crowd-surfing; instead she's perfected the art of crowd-walking – hurling herself forward but upright into the crowd, trampling fans' heads, necks and arms as they reach out to grab their pulsating hero. And it's this energy and musical violence that make Crystal Castles more than just a simple synth band, and Glass more than just a frontwoman.
Kath's digital genius shouldn't be ignored (it's his sharp electronic missiles that keep the noisy two-piece grounded in near-reality) and Glass's vocals aren't all that fantastic, but her stage presence is consuming. Gazing through pulsating strobes, her fans are hooked, convinced she's morphed from a lo-fi electro-indie hero into a soon-to-be rock god. And it seems, at least for now, that she's learned to turn up on time too.
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/crystal-castles-roundhouse-london-2112108.htmlAttachments:
