Whitest Boy Alive // Digital

Photo by Suki Hosha

It’s not often that I find myself and assorted friends assembled on the seafront waiting for a repeat performance from a band we saw, in almost identical circumstances, one year previously, but last Sunday we were thus positioned, shivering none too slightly in the fading not-quite-summer sun; drinking cider from plastic glasses on the terrace outside Coalition, watching nearby Digital fill up with Whitest Boy Alive fans. 

I attended last year’s gig purely on the strength of lead singer Erlend Oye’s work with his acoustic band, Kings of Convenience, and was impressed by how well the tracks translated from the recording to the stage and the tightness of the sound. Since then, as predicted, Whitest Boy Alive has gone from strength to strength, touring in Europe and South America to critical acclaim and releasing their second album, Rules. 

I have my reservations about Digital as a live venue, where its strengths most certainly don’t lie. This was exemplified for me at last year’s Of Montreal gig where my position near the back meant I could neither hear not see anything worth reporting. With my vertically challenged stature, I am used to the main visual feature of gigs being the back of other people’s heads, but as I believe music is primarily for listening to this isn’t a problem, except at venues which pack in so many fans that people are forced to stand behind speakers or in other acoustically unsatisfactory locations. In any case, on Sunday I made sure not to be in this unfortunate position and by the time the warm up act had taken to the stage, we had secured our position near the front of the crowd, conveniently underneath the dripping pipe from the toilets above. 

Despite the misleading impression created by the name they share with a large Christian organisation, The New Wine were a good choice for a warm up act. Hailing from Bergen, Norway, like Erlend Oye himself, I wondered if they were perhaps old friends as they seem to share a great many musical influences, or perhaps they’re just really big fans of WBA. In any case, they did exactly what a support band should do, playing a solid, upbeat set, mercifully without any hint of Christian Rock. 

As Whitest Boy Alive took to the stage, a swift look around at the crowd showed a number of fans sporting Erlend-style glasses, for what I assume to be stylistic rather than optometrical reasons.  Erlend himself is as geeky and understated as we remember him. Perhaps his modest attire is secretly as carefully crafted as that of the tight-trousered, asymmetrically-haired brigade but something tells this isn’t the case. 

Since last year, fourth member Daniel Nentwig (Rhodes & Crumar) has joined the band full time, bringing the band’s full complement to four. The remaining members are  Marcin Oz on bass and Sebastian Maschat on drums, looking somewhat stoned tonight, although in fairness this could be an olfactory reaction to whoever it was in the front few rows suffering from some serious anus problems at the beginning of the set. 

The set began with a selection from recent release Rules, and went on to include some hits from Dreams, with a few humorous covers thrown in for good measure –  a rendition of Prodigy’s outer space and  a few bars of Arman Van Helden’s classic you don’t even know me of particular note. Highlights for me were Golden Cage – a dance routine on stage here from bassist Marcin Oz and Erlend which I would love to believe was impromptu but was just a little too good not to have been choreographed;  and opening track Keep a Secret. The whole set flowed seamlessly, which was no surprise to me given Erlend’s demonstrable attention to detail. If you look closely, he is filling the role of conductor as well as lead guitar in this band, giving directions to the other band members, the sound and lighting team and even the audience, correcting us when we get it wrong. 

My overwhelming impression of this band, and I undoubtedly said this last year too, is their evident happiness which I so appreciate in a musical world too often featuring misunderstood shoegazing miseries. They actually look like they’re having fun, which given that they spend their days playing music, is hardly too much to ask. By the end of the gig they were down in the crowd, dancing with all of us, which put paid to my note-taking. I even managed to catch a drumstick, which given that I have trouble catching lighters and pens was quite an achievement. 

I was surprised to see mixed reviews of Rules appearing online, some suggesting that the band is moving backwards from its original mandate as a step away from Erlend’s traditional acoustic sound to electronic dance music, others bandying words like flat and subdued, suggesting that Whitest Boy Alive’s sound is less suited to bars and clubs than “the headphones of people walking down empty streets” (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12830-rules/) and perhaps this is so, on listening to the recording – however, for me, the band’s remarkable ability to translate their studio album to a quite different live experience is one of the many beautiful things about the Whitest Boy Alive.

Whitest Boy Alive at Brighton Coalition last year:

http://www.brightonfusion.co.uk/live/2008/05/19/whitest-boy-alive-special-guests-rubies/