"I have little concern for beauty or perfection. I care not for the great centuries. I care only for life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease amongst our generation."
Beginning a review by quoting Emile Zola is to combine pretension but no little pertinence. For whilst it might be a little much to imagine the FatCat organisers thumbing through the French author's Mes haines in the build-up to this tour, it is nevertheless a remarkably accurate resumé of the line-up and their respective performances. Such intensity is rarely found in such abundance. Not only is it particularly advisable, but it's also decidedly infrequent that you find such a heavyweight line-up blasting through Europe.
It's also slightly surprising, certainly in the case of Mazes. For on their debut record, their wonky, scraggly rock 'n' roll plays out like a particularly deranged tight-rope walker, wobbling between dazed slacker pop and crazed garage fuzz. Their Flèche d'Or appearance sees them unsheathe their sharper edge and rattle through what basically amounts to "A Thousand Heys", but with all the buttons mashed down. It still sounds pretty ramshackle, though: a sweaty, rollicking bash through "Go Betweens" and the crisp, British-invasion-voiced indolence of "No Way" are particular highlights, and a clutterless setlist is played through at the sort of breathless pace that suggests there's something good on TV. (There isn't; this is France after all.) Yet whilst an average song length of just over two and a half minutes doesn't exactly lend itself to bloated proggish nightmares, there's nevertheless space on the bill for the feverish "Wait Anyway", a cocksure corkscrew of spiralling riffs and gibbering choruses that goes up a weight division halfway through, resulting in a lumbering, sludge-lite denouement that makes the more follicly-challenged amongst us long for Conan Roberts' flowing locks.
Much has been said about The Twilight Sad in a live setting. Opinion wavers between -- at its most polite -- "boring" (criticism which is often joyfully circulated via James Graham's Twitter feed) and ear-scorchingly beautiful. Particularly divisive is the intensity of Graham's performance, the accusation being that his mannerisms on stage -- which include clinging to the microphone like a drunk to his Buckie and standing side on to the audience, convulsing like a taser victim -- can prove unnerving. Combined with the sheer aggression of the band's music, you can perhaps understand why some of humanity's more sensitive members struggle to withstand the sonic assault. Setting off with the whip-crack drums of "That Summer, at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy" and never looking back, the band careens through the radio-friendly "I Became A Prostitute" with Graham howling into the roaring tumult. The cryptically invigorating "Reflection Of The Television" emerges out of the brume with the audience waiting for the thumping chorus as a sailor watches the approaching storm. The top-heavy tour, effectively a European showcase for FatCat's noisier signings, means that the group is restricted to a "best of" sprint through their back catalogue, with two new tracks thrown in for good measure. First signs of "Alphabet", with Twilightian sentiments abound ("I'm sick to death of the sight of you now") suggest that new album "No One Can Ever Know" is unlikely to offer any let up. Second new track of the night, the hook-free "Kill It In The Morning", brings to mind the nightmarish red-light gay-club drone of Gaspar Noé's Irreversible, a dark, seething purge of throbbing, almost gothic desolation. Ever since the band's self-titled debut EP and Stereogum's 2007 tribute to "OK Computer" (featuring the band's glorious, scene-stealing version of "Climbing Up The Walls", which took Radiohead's distraught disconnection and raised it to unseen levels of crushing, desperate frenzy), The Twilight Sad have principally dealt in raging misery, a cat-and-mouse game of teasing misanthropy and explosive catharsis. "Cold Days From The Birdhouse", the blistering, sorrow-wrought opener to "Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters", proves every bit as exhilarating as on the record, trading in the deceptively gentle acousticism for guitars raging against the dying of the light. Unremitting, unforgiving and unbridled: in short, it's wretched despair at its most stirring.
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Equally stirring, if slightly lighter on the fear and loathing, are We Were Promised Jetpacks, the second half of the Celtic connection on show tonight. With a sophomore release imminent, their headline slot mixes old and new in equal measure. It's safe to say that little's changed. The enthusiasm is there, and a forthright impatience to get to the meat of the music burns through the brief mid-eight lulls and inter-song pauses. The chainsaw-like guitars of "Circles And Squares" build like light drizzle into a downpour, intensifying with every second. With the first track barely over, the band hits "Quiet Little Voices" at a gallop. Known for their youthful sincerity and a relentless energy, the greatest compliment to be made is that their new tracks -- such as the frenetic "Picture Of Health", all berserker guitars and haunting reverb, and the insanely infectious "Human Error" -- slot in seamlessly. Unsurprisingly for a band that was playing the States six months after their debut album hit the shops, urgency is their lifeblood, and every last drop of sweat-soaked velocity is bullied out of their thrumming fingers. The occasional burst of contrast, notably in the eloquent rendition of "Pear Tree" -- a far more delicately balanced incarnation than the thrumming album version -- is most welcome (the vocal few for whom "It's Thunder And It's Lightning" was clearly the only purchase criteria excluded), but even this is marked by the torrential roar that bookends Adam Thompson's anguished cries.
Much to the crowd's delight, the long-awaited "It's Thunder And It's Lightning" follows soon after: the Parisian crowd's almost rabid yearning pours fuel on an already rampant fire. The drums crack harder, Thompson's burred yowl is bathed in a deeper torment, the song's apogee somehow more vertiginous. Likewise "Roll Up Your Sleeves", ripped into with abandon by the band by now swaying and streaming under the glare of the lights.
A fiercely visceral experience, this evening is an earnest show of strength and potency from the FatCat stable. Excellency through intensity: what Keats put into his life and lyrics, the three bands tonight have rendered in music.
Mazes on MySpace
The Twilight Sad on MySpace
We Were Promised Jetpacks on MySpace
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