Electrelane's final gig (revisited)

I'm not entirely sure why, but it feels like I should (re-)post my review of Electrelane's final gig.

If anyone would like to see the review in its original printed form from Plan B 29, with fine Greg Neate photography, then click here.

 

Electrelane
Pavilion Theatre, Brighton

There’s no fanfare.

There’s no phone-in vote to determine the winners. My emotions are strained: halfway saddened by the passing of all flesh and halfway happy that some folk – some gentle, proud folk – know when to call it a day. If only all art was finite. If only all creators cared. It seems that Electrelane reached their height with 2005’s astonishing Axes: one album, no breaks, no fills, just the pull of separation and transitory comfort of friendship: and that all that’s happened since is a gradual comedown, a dawning realisation. Don’t get me wrong: this year’s No, Shouts, No Calls is special indeed and saturated with love, but when I caught the band warming up at Brighton’s cosy Westhill community centre a few months back, prior to what turned out to be their final tour (barring, of course, the inevitable Don’t Look Back series of concerts 10 years hence) it already seemed they were split in two – on one side, Verity Susman’s explorative piano and space rock imaginings: on the other Mia Clarke’s Marnie Stern-influenced, Chicagoan guitar shredding. I feared then what the future would bring: the future brings what the future always brings. Nothing, and the death of desire.

So Electrelane are no more – or rather, on “indefinite hiatus”. That’s quite a deal in my life: since my return from Australia in 2000, and starting Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B, they’ve drifted in and across my vision: a welcome, reassuring constant, old friends that you never need to call on cos you know they’re always around. I can trace my forties through their personalities: hanging out in their Brighton practise space opposite Duke Of Yorks in the bitter, cold aftermath of 9/11 for CTCL’s first ever interview (2001’s Rock It To The Moon), listening wonder-struck to Verity’s vocals on frantic 2003 single ‘I Want To Be The President’ and the tumultuous, brief Bruce Springsteen cover ‘I’m On Fire’, recording bassist Ros Murray’s previous band, the minimal poignant/funny Lesbo Pig, for my one Totally Radio session, in clubs and in trouble with drummer Emma Gaze and Mia Clarke…those horrible, dark weeks following my father’s death where a spoken-word piece I’d recorded with Susman was played at his cremation…down the Freebutt, the Pavilion, the Concorde, the Old Market (where The Legend! band featuring Scout Niblett and Sam from The Go! Team played heartbeat ante-natal support, a few months before Isaac’s birth)…in Berlin with Verity for an art gallery concert…frustrated and chided by the fact we had no magazine around to celebrate Electrelane’s wonderful, melody-drenched second album The Power Out; in 2004 with a front cover…numerous DJ spots where Electrelane’s stunning choral piece ‘The Valleys’ was the only relief on another bleak, friendless night…

And now Electrelane have gone. No fanfare, no flourishes: just a bottle of champagne passed down the front after a second, noisy encore (2001 single ‘Film Music’ followed by the Springsteen cover), a couple of hasty bows and that’s it.

“Do you think people are going to cry,” my wife asked early on, following an awesome version of 2007 single ‘To The East’, Susman moving possessed, throwing out formless words and near-shrieks into the void, as her keyboard built layer upon welter of emotion and desire. I found it difficult to answer. Sadly – or perhaps thankfully – ‘To The East’ was the set’s highpoint, five songs in. After that stormy interlude, the band reduced the pressure with a muted version of new single, the reflective ‘In Berlin’ – and, two songs later, introduced tour support Anni Rossi to add violin to metronomic pulse beat of ‘The Greater Times’ (about the only time they came close to a grand gesture). The guitar sounded oddly muted. It wasn’t like it didn’t fit in, or that Clarke wasn’t giving her all, but it sounded muted – or maybe it was that Susman was thrashing her keyboards so wildly during certain numbers (2007 single ‘In Berlin’, set closer, 2001 track ‘Long Dark’, opening song ‘Bells’) that it countered the wildness, the dissonance. Even when Clarke was sawing her instrument across her amp (2001 B-side ‘U.O.R’, heavy rocking 2007 song ‘Between The Wolf And The Dog’) it seemed subdued.

As the end grew closer, the knowledge this was the final time seemed to hang heavier in the air: odd yelps of “I love you Verity” and extended applause breaks (particularly following the first encore of ‘On Parade’ and 2005 single ‘Two For Joy’) interspersed the sound of a band finally winding down a musical legacy they can be immensely proud of.

No Shouts, No Calls is the title of their final album. No shouts, no calls. Electrelane have gone. And the newest (and shyest) member, bassist Ros Murray, took centre stage for the final show.