Having cheekily managed to scramble out of work early, and successfully peg it up to Liverpool’s O2 academy without getting spat on, hit on, started on or vomited up on – no small feat within the mercilessly drunk antics of Saturday night – I finally arrive at the venue to discover I’ve missed the first bloody song.
At first the thought concerns me – a bands introduction can be vital in establishing atmosphere and tone – but then the longer the gig chugs on for, the more I realise that in reality, I’ve probably missed sod all – just a few earthy, booming drum beats and some fancy lighting effects, both of which are infuriatingly dominant throughout the whole gig anyway.
Bat For Lashes (AKA Natasha Khan) is out of her depth in a venue this large. Unable to effectively entertain or captivate the majority of the audience, BFL is constantly almost drowned out by what is a typical Saturday night audience – loud, gab-happy and rowdy. Yes, she’s incredibly gifted for the atmospherics, but they’re atmospherics best suited to lounging about on a field somewhere with a smoke and a thermos or your mates’ living room, post-party. Right now she’s fighting a losing battle with the cackling, banter-eager masses.
Suffice to say her performance is woefully underwhelming – utterly unfeeling, soulless and blank, BFL lacks any kind of energy and doesn’t display any sign that she’s enjoying a single minute of her own music. You want to grab her go ‘Natasha! Remember that time when you drank a snifter of Babycham and danced in one of your nanas dresses to 2-unlimited before throwing up in a boot? Yes? Great! Channel it!! Have some fun!’ – come on girl, even a Rice Crispie can Snap! Crackle! And Pop!
That’s not to say that BFL are terrible – on a technical level they’re utterly perfect, with a strong backing band supplying unflinchingly spot-on support to Natasha’s voice, which at times is gallantly exquisite. Every song is performed with an album-quality sheen – but that’s also part of the problem. The entire set is flawless to a fault – rendering it utterly droll and totally redundant live, stripping the performance of any personality that would normally endear the audience to a performer. A set without any flaws is like the musical equivalent of botox – yes there’s no wrinkles, but there’s also no emotion – no expression.
Robotic and over-rehearsed – there’s little rapport with the audience, and when there is BFL looks uncomfortable with the interaction and tends to criticise the audience (‘…you’re a rowdy lot, aren’t you Liverpool…?’ she sulks at one point), who’re getting more and more restless with every song (which are merging monotonously into one – the same drumbeat, jingle-jangle bits and repetitious Bjork-homage-vocal lines making differentiation between songs difficult).
A quick glance around at the audience confirms that BFL is failing to hit the spot – a vision of sleepy, unimpressed expressions is plastered about the place – one woman on the top balcony has actually fallen asleep standing up.
Blighted by sound problems (a nasty amount of feedback emanates from BFL’ microphone on a regular basis throughout), the set becomes awkward and Natasha is visibly unimpressed, with the band looking gloriously nervous as to the verbal-lashings the sound-techs are going to supposedly receive after the gig.
She tries something vaguely interesting in the sets finale – wheeling out a big screen T.V. (I’m reminded of those substitute teachers you’d get in school who, after losing complete control of the class, would wheel the T.V. out and put The Simpsons on for half an hour in order to shut everyone up), and singing dual vocals with what looks like herself in a blonde wig. It’s not great, but a nice attempt at doing something a bit different (although I seem to recall Zombina And The Skeletones pulling a similar trick years ago when their drummer was on holiday – and Christ, they had fake blood and songs you could actually dance to).
Part of me wishes the big screen could have been left out if just to broadcast the scalding BFL no doubt inflicted on the buffoon who fucked up her sound.
Oh well.
Set highlights include the bass-heavy, ‘Trophy’ (in which BFL nearly screamed the finale of – screamed!) and the aptly named ‘The Big Sleep’ which is dramatic, decadent and just a little bit lovely. So there you go – not all bad.
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