North London band Bombay Bicycle Club played like battle-ready veterans at their Neptune Theatre gig last week. That’s not really a surprise, given the fact that they’ve been UK chart fixtures for nearly a decade. The big revelation from this corner was how good they sounded live.
BBC’s four albums play like a tour through a melange of influences: Jumpy post-punk guitar rock, acoustic indie folk, electronic pop, and Afro-Beat informed dance music all fight for elbow room in the band’s sound. That versatility’s almost been a liability on record, with too-polite production sometimes buffing away the character in leader Jack Steadman’s songs. On a concert stage, though, Bombay Bicycle Club offered the best of both worlds, crafting a dense wall of atmosphere without letting that density overwhelm them.
The band’s newest record So Long, See You Tomorrow dominated the set, and drummer Suren de Saram and bass player Ed Nash (aided by an additional percussionist) navigated the album’s bursts of polyrhythms gracefully while guitarists Steadman and Jamie MacColl painted on texture and melody. Liberated from the confines of studio sweetening, the songs (and the band) blossomed, and the sold-out crowd seldom let up from a state of constant rhythmic motion.
The entire set offered plenty of little revelations. The loping toy-piano hook of “Shuffle” bounced even more vigorously live, and MacColl’s and Steadman’s jabbing guitar notes goosed an especially frenetic reading of “Evening-Morning.” Steadman’s voice took some getting used to–it’s part angelic croon, part neurotic monotone– but it provided an affecting and distinctive anchor for the sound last Wednesday. Throughout, the band played with a hyperkinetic energy that never short-changed their smarts.
For much of the performance, animation pulsed along several circular scrims behind the band, bringing imagery from the So Long, See You Tomorrow cover to big-screen life. Impressive as the added eye candy was, though, Bombay Bicycle Club sported enough high points on their own to render such gilding superfluous.