Live Review

The Klaxons – QMU, Glasgow

• 23rd Nov 2010

You can never tell what a gig is going to be like. Some would say a gig which is rearranged to a smaller venue cannot be held in high expectation of being a good night. Well, that is only true if you take sales figures to be the point of success, others would rather be true to the art and hell, some of histories unsavoury characters have had mass support, so it just goes to show, popularity does not always mean the great and the good.

First up tonight are the young go-getting four-piece group from London who celebrate all things Glaswegian when it comes to music. The band for your information is called Fiction; the sad thing is though they do not possess the magic and jazzy fervour of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but are more like the dour pages of the Dickensian novel Great Expectations. The first couple of songs show a spritely optimism. All the requirements for an upbeat, pleasant and patient indie band are there, with instrumentation not out of place in the post-punk, new wave era, with all the synths, drums and other magical boxes of tricks which can be thrown out to the baying crowd. However, this quickly dissipates. They drone on in epic format rather like a slow HGV going up to the precipice of a rather large hill, with the sound becoming more epic you get a slight sense of confusion. There is promise, but in the murk of the smoke machine punctuated by the dazzling lights there is left the ash of an average band. It is not that they are bad, it is just that they have no glue to make it stick together.

Now, what you have to remember is that Klaxons are normally reserved as a warning sound for ships in the night or trains going at full pelt. The Klaxons are more like that train, unstoppable, unrelenting and bombastic in their foot to the floor indie groove. With a quick fire salvo they are the heroes people want and their sound is progressive and huge thanks to this 4 piece from way-down yonder. No surprise to see them on tour, they are currently promoting their second album, Surfing the Void off which some tracks are given a whirl and gratefully received. The wait was worth the 3 years of everyone else coming and going. Everyone can anticipate a lightening show and it is hard to sense a feeling of disappointed. You cannot really tell the difference between their songs of menace, but there no soppy ballads in which to get your tissue out and with a mix of exhilaration to complete brutish force, they ensure each and every explosion of sound is more like ravishment than a song. Not everyone agrees, Andy who is a seasoned Klaxons man said, “They are pish and only here because the NME like them”. He seems to be one of a very few of the naysayers, most feel the glowing atmosphere which is so large, the QMU actually becomes a tardis of fermented joy. Bliss.