It seems to me that Esben and the Witch would like to perform in absolute darkness. Or perhaps in silhouette behind a screen like an oriental shadowplay. Such a theatrical device might even suit their dark, menacing music. Instead, two of the three band members have to make do with a curtain of hair between themselves and the audience. Young and shy, they deliver their moody, occasionally explosive music with low-key confidence and, in fact, their slight awkwardness in front of a crowd only enhances the edginess of the atmospherics.
Outside, the Brighton night is aptly overcome with mist which seems to have made its way onto the stage before the trio's appearance. Then, with an ominous pacing throb of bass drums, they wander on, quiet people, heavily tipped in various New Year polls, ready to make a lot of noise. For the opening number, "Argyria", singer Rachel Davies, clad in long-sleeved black, stands, as she will most of the evening, centre stage, hunched and nodding twitchily to the rhythm she bangs out on a single drum, her face often hidden by her straight, whipping brown locks. She sings with the kind of part-yelp expression that Siouxsie Sioux once made her own, riding the ominous rising noise around her.
Beside her guitarist Daniel Copeman, the band's musical driving force, wraps himself round his guitar, a long side-fringe overhanging his face like the shoegaze bands of the late Eighties. Indeed, Esben and the Witch have some small common ground with those bands in the way they use relentless musical structure and occasional freeform noise. With only a brand-new debut album, Violet Cries (released yesterday) to draw upon, their set is short (45 or 50 minutes) but they pack it with enough slow-burning activity and tension to make it satisfying.
Early in the set comes "Marching Song", the band's most famous number at this early stage in their career due to its startling video (see below). Like much of their best work, it has a slow plodding drum at its core. Davies plays this - there's no other drummer, except when Copeman also attacks the simple drum and cymbal arrangement - and the song paces gradually into exhilarating walls of feedback and fear.
There is no banter with the audience. Davies tells us this is the band's first visit to Brighton (from where the group hail) in a year and she snaps out a quick, shy "Thank you" after every song, but that's it. Instead they concentrate on constructing their spooked sonic world, with second guitarist/synth player Thomas Fisher adding further layers to their melee of unease. If I had one complaint it was that it wasn't loud enough. This sort of music works best when it overwhelms you with its clarity and volume. This is a minor quibble, though, which will be overcome when the band fill bigger venues than the Pavilion Theatre. As they draw to a close, only eight songs in, with the raging, doomy, melodic "Eumenides" it strikes home how far they are from the average indie band. They're certainly worth catching live - their unique broth of Wicker Man abjection and literate Gothicism is already fully formed - but I have a strong feeling these shows give only a hint of the potency the band will be able to muster in a year or two.
- Find Violet Cries on Amazon
- Book tickets for Esben and the itch on Seetickets
Watch the video of "Marching Song"
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