Live: The XX, Esben and the Witch – Audio, Brighton – 27/10/09

words: Jamie Milton
originally scribed for gigwise.com

When The xx first emerged, a lot of the press began to fall head over heels in love with the vocals above the beats, the minimalism, the vital components of what makes the self-titled debut so irresistibly dense and inventive. Oliver Sim and Romy Madley-Croft were the voices in question – Sim’s husky, soulful voice harmonising with Madley-Croft’s simple, retrospective tones.

You wouldn’t have been a fool in thinking that this was just a two-piece who relied on tape players to blast out the beat-ridden backdrops when playing live. Jamie Smith and Baria Qureshi are relatively anonymous on ‘XX’ and again, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they would just be used for live shows only and not the recording. But at Brighton Audio, six months into touring, all four work as one, providing for eachother and respecting what each member gives. They look like a four-piece band, is what I’m trying to say.

Esben and the Witch on the other hand, look like they could do with a few more members. So powerful and constructed is their sound at times that it defies belief to see just three people unleashing it. What defines their set tonight is an ability to settle a sporadically placed audience into a comfortable lull, before rudely awakening them with an almost Mogwai-esque wall of noise. Stage props of owls and lit-up globes give their tracks played from accomplished debut EP ‘33‘ an identity although said ornaments would more suitably assist their recordings. The band’s myspace page is similarly decorated with old-fashioned, black-and-white images capable of giving you nightmares. The haunting base upon which their recordings rely on can be barely heard tonight, largely due to the hideous interruptions of feedback that hardly suits what the band is trying to achieve. But their performance draws in a far more tightly-packed crowd as the set progresses and the fact that you can draw parallels between the vocals and the mood of Esben and the Witch’s sound to that of the headline act, wets the appetite.

And make no mistake: This is not a night to drink Horchata or to mingle with strangers standing centimetres from you. What both of these bands produce is a claustrophobic feel, akin to the uncomfortable awareness that this venue’s ceiling is a little bit too low for your liking.

The xx’s set is tight and finely-tuned, an impressive feat considering Jamie Smith has to tap every single strained beat and fluctuating bass note on his sampler manually – there is room for error but errors are not made. The one drawback of this is that at least initially, the songs aren’t identifiable to those on record that you might as well be at home listening through some dodgy laptop speakers. But be it a gaining of confidence or a purposeful drip-drip effect, the set improves and the band venture into alternative closings of songs (‘Basic Space‘’s climax is unexpected, the highlight of the night) and Sim and Madley-Croft begin to add more energy and meaning to the lyrics they sing.

The night ends fittingly with album closer ‘Stars‘ – one of the few songs that sounds superior to its recording tonight. But that’s a terrific feat to conquer, to be able to adjust from near-perfection without sounding like you’ve lost your way. The faultlessness of ‘XX‘ could have been the stumbling point for the band that had to perform these precise songs live. But it was not to be. That’s quite an achievement – summing up a year in which this young London four-piece haven’t put a foot wrong.

mp3: Esben and the Witch – About This Peninsula
mp3: The xx – Stars

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