Broken Records and Freelance Whales (Crawdaddy, Dublin)
Review by James Hendicott
Photos by Sean Smyth
Life in a buzz band must be hard. Over the course of their set, Freelance Whales mention their subtlety brilliant Electric Picnic performance, and then tell us how great it is to play their first show in Ireland. They might not be quite sure what’s going on, but at least that doesn’t extend to their music: these Brooklyn native’s sprawling stage show is expansive and varied, twisting modern folk and swirling vocal gymnastics with an organic feel that highlights the performance as a set rather than a collection of individual songs.
The set list consists of… well, everything Freelance Whales have, with the whole of debut album Weather Vanes given an airing alongside a loud, crescendo-fuelled newcomer in the feisty ‘Enzyme’. The set seems to wash over the listener, with all-encompassing instrument changes and subtlety-layered vocals incorporating every member of the band, and adding a complexity to the sound that’s both charming and at times strangely disorienting. The double-barreled danceable spiel of ‘Generator 1st Floor’ and Generator 2nd Floor’ are highlights amongst an inarguably captivating introduction to a band that comes across as both naïve and of-the-minute, yet remains impressively poignant. The similarities to slightly twee superstars like Arcade Fire are difficult to miss. Freelance Whales might dress like hippie-leaning hipsters, but when they the performances are so powerful, we can but forgive them.
In hindsight, the promoters might feel that running Broken Records as de facto headliner (the show has been promoted as a double header) was a mistake. The final note of Freelance Whale’s set sees the majority of attendees in the sauna-like room flit into the night, and Broken Records are left performing to an audience we’ll politely describe as ‘thin’. Given the lack of interest, they’re not at all bad, though the wall-of-sound guitars and layered violin sound like thrash metal next to their tour companion’s delicate weaving. The Scots have a husky dimension to them, and in a live setting a slight imbalance between their instrumentation is only made up for to a limited extent by some boisterous on-stage antics.
Broken Records, though, are all potential, while Freelance Whales are starting to look very much like the finished article, just a friendly nudge away from the big time. A classic case of a support act leaving the headliners standing. Having said that, we don’t expect to see either of these bands on a stage this small in Dublin again. Watch this space.
