Image by Michael Boyd
These New Puritans whip crowd into robot-dance frenzy
June 14, 2008, at Subterranean
By Amy Formanski
Published: June 16th, 2008 | 12:01pm
After listening to These New Puritans' songs online, I worried that their music wouldn't translate well into a live show. With so many electronic blips, samples, and thumps, the material could very quickly devolve into a dissonant mess. Aside from potential technical difficulties, the presentation of experimental electronica could resemble a music laboratory more than a rock show. Maybe this sort of electronic punk rock accompanies a Dior fashion show magnificently, as it did last fall, but watching people fiddle with machinery on stage can leave one cold. But TNP laid my fears to rest straightaway at Subterranean in Chicago. As soon as they stepped on stage, they appeared in control, smooth, and fierce, almost like extremely attractive British robots.
Singer Jack Barnett wore a gold sequined shirt plucked right out of a Gustav Klimt painting and shouted his repetitious lyrics in a way that sounded simultaneously authoritative and apathetic. Jack, along with his brother drummer George, bassist Thomas Hein, and keyboardist Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, fit the British rock star mold — skinny and impossibly adorable — but they seduced the crowd with their pulse-quickening beats.
The audience bounced along to show opener “Navigate, Navigate,” the song used for the aforementioned fashion show. From then on, the band flawlessly transitioned from one track to the next. “Swords of Truth” pounded us with the sound of imposing trumpets and intermittent slashes of guitar. When Jack declared, “You'll be slashing at the air” the audience responded accordingly. The crowd of young hipsters wearing '80s-style vests and hats that channeled either Samantha Ronson or Duckie from “Pretty in Pink” frantically danced through the entire set. They thrashed their arms from side to side, pogoed, and even busted out air guitar and air drums. In all my life, I've never seen air drumming before this show. I admired both the boundless enthusiasm of this next generation of new wavers and the band for inspiring this sort of frenzy, but the dancers around me and my best friend broke the magical spell a bit when they accidentally stepped on our feet several times. Some of the dancing seemed to be inspired by the classic Talking Heads video “Once in a Lifetime,” and the choppy style matched the Puritans' rapid-fire rhythm.
As much as the crowd gushed with enthusiasm, the band looked disconnected from their energy. Sleigh-Johnson stared intensely at her Mac laptop as she played her keyboards and didn't crack a smile once all night. In addition to the repetitive lyrics of the songs, Jack kept yelling “a thousand miles an hour” and “These New Puritans 2008” in between songs. He gave us no jokes or idle chit-chat as most performers do to charm their fans. It felt almost as if they performed behind an invisible wall that made them unaware of the room beyond their stage.
What the band lacked in warmth they more than compensated for with the pounding precision of their dance beats. “Numerology AKA Numbers” with its chant of “Every number has a meaning” perfectly meshed droning speed metal guitar with 80s new wave synthesizers and a drum n bass hook. By the time they played “fff,” in which Jack urgently bellows the word “fire” dozens of times, I wondered if the worshiping crowd would evacuate the venue just because he commanded such rapt attention. Coincidentally, firetrucks drove past the doors after the show, but everyone emerged unscathed and amped up. The audience clearly adored this band, but would it kill them to show some love in return? Maybe it's part of their image to maintain European aloofness. They might not care for our Midwestern emoting.
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