| WHITE LIES / the real Life & Death Brigade |
| Written by Luke Oram |
| Monday, 03 August 2009 17:52 |
 WHITE LIES took to the stage in a typically English manner. A quiet and polite stride towards their onstage weapons of choice, with a subdued royal wave. The real surprise came in the uncharacteristically ecstatic welcome they received from the crowd. Perhaps there was a hidden English tourist contingent storming the Studio’s balconies, or maybe this truly was the beginning of the glum-rock revival. It’s not hard to see how White Lies have become an international buzz-band in the space of a year, or so. Their gothic sing-a-long anthems come off like a depressed U2; the perfect mix for the working class, and a staple diet for rock radio.  Your second surprise comes in the form of the lads themselves. Frontman Harry McVeigh looks about 12 years old in person, which lends a whole new twist to his mature Ian Curtis baritone. From the first note you’re hearing a band who’s musical tastes are mature beyond their years, as if they had skipped the angst of their peers and headed straight for their parents’ record collections - the tunes are classic and assured. From the slow-burn opening, the whole charge is led by bass player Charles Cave’s subsonic bass lines and drummer Jack Lawrence-Brown’s militant drumming, his Beatle-esque bob weaving in and out of the spotlights as he urges the dark machine onwards.  A couple of songs into the set, McVeigh launches into 'To Lose My Life' and the crowd become a part of the machine. As strange as it is to hear a capacity filled room singing along with the front man’s hyper-morose lyrics, it’s kind of uplifting... as if we’re bonded by the Ealing lad’s pseudo-pain. The industrial slog of 'E.S.T' is at it’s most sinister live, McVeigh’s soaring voice proving it’s worth atop swaggering synths and spartan rhythms; tight, heavy and as earnest as a battery and assault. Tracks like ‘Farewell to the Fairground’ come alive in their dark dancehall glory, the crowd screaming along with McVeigh’s urgent breakdown: “Keep on running, keep, keep on running, there’s no place like home” – each gothic tale starting in the pits, but climbing to euphoric, fevered hooks.  Mechanical ballad 'Nothing to Give' sees McVeigh howling at the moon like a wounded victim, his voice huge and straining to the rafters before his band-mates step in to save him with an imploding wall of noise. I remember thinking; it shouldn’t work. The equation is all wrong – nice English lads weaving tales of death, destruction and love’s unending road toll. But somehow White Lies turn tragedy into triumph, their robotic dearth scraping the bottom of the barrel and emerging in anthemic euphoria. For this crowd, it was the winning formula too – glum never sounded so good.  |
