Institute of Contemporary Arts

Yeasayer / Ipso Facto

Date: 10 March 2008

Yeasayer. Photo: Alan Bolger

Taking to the stage of the ICA with slightly bored, (or is that mildly terrified?) looks upon their faces, London-based Ipso Facto are a hair-raising vision of Louise Brooks bobs and monochromatic mini's. The femme fatales in the latest wave of noir indie offspring to emerge from Southend-On-Sea, like their black clad cohorts The Horrors and These New Puritans, they are all meticulously Mod and immaculately coiffed.

As the lead chanteuse stares daggers at the audience her voice booms in a surprisingly deep dulcet tones, swooping and moaning to be released from an ivory tower that looks down upon a swirling smoky fair ground where the carousel organ pipes an eternal soundtrack to their fate.

Primitive, psychedelic swirly guitars sound slightly messy tonight, while the bass player plucks at her mammoth instrument, which has been flipped to fit her left handed handycap, the keyboardist plays a hypnotic organ and peeks out from below heavy bangs, harmonising sweetly when it's called for. Meanwhile the drummer pounds out their marching orders in the back, she plays intently and adeptly and completes the high drama of their creeping noir pop. Achingly stylish, its perhaps their downfall, as we note style before substance, and despite all their decoration, they are a dull plateau.

by Millie Ross

If you were ever skeptical about the masses of hype that the new Brooklyn music scene has been receiving recently, then last night’s Yeasayer gig would have made all the things you’ve ever read, seen or heard suddenly make startling sense. The last gig of their UK tour and their second sold out night at the ICA, the Yeasayer boys had truly mastered the art of live performance with a controlled but by no means dull opening to their set.

Almost instantly subsuming us in a mantra of shimmering cymbals, sultry, synthy tones, booming bass lines, one could be forgiven for instantly forgetting the weather conditions outside as sampled sound effects whisked us off to distant plains and exotic faraway landscapes – far removed from the reality of a wet and blustery Monday night in the centre of town.

Engaged in a definite sense of reciprocity, (which is so often lost in live music) both Yeasayer and the crowd became locked in a psychedelic groove that called upon so many musical influences. The synchronization between programmed beats and live percussion was so tight that it became difficult to tell which was which. Akin to that of African tribal drumming, complex multi-layered rhythms were matched with dub-infused, ribcage-rattling bass lines and any question of distance between the crowd and the band was negated as the both became instantaneously entranced in a hypnotic crescendo.

Ploughing through the set with an increasing ferocity, the performance of ‘Sunrise’ mixed a harmonious trio of vocals with a rhythmic hand-clap interlude that got the already engrossed crowd going absolutely mad; no fashion-conscious head-nodding here! Girls and boys alike were dancing in a way more reminiscent of a rave than a Monday night indie gig!!!

Despite the conscious twiddling and tweaking of buttons and knobs, wires and machines from front man, Christ Keating and guitarist, Anand Wilder, there’s something remarkably organic and unpretentious about Yeasayer. Their sound combines a humbling sense of concentrated precision and nervous energy, which - like all good things do - left everyone feeling like it was all over too quickly.

Ispo Facto. Photo: Alan Bolger