Warpaint

With so many options to choose from, picking out the Splendour In The Grass sideshow most worthy of attention on any night this week was always going to be tricky. Clearly the ladies of Warpaint made quite an impression on Melbourne audiences during their Laneway Festival-related visit earlier in the year, because they managed to hold of the competition and pack The Corner Hotel to capacity two nights in a row.

On the second of those nights, the stage was warmed by Sydney artist Jack Ladder. It was a bit of a rough beginning, with a botched introduction causing the singer to storm off the stage, re-appearing only after a bit of coaxing from members of his band, The Dreamlanders. The set felt a little flat to me, with Ladder’s deep and haunting recorded vocals sounding fairly thin in the live setting and not holding the spotlight too well. While the band did a fairly impressive job of building up moody walls of reverb and distortion, the songs leaned a little too heavily on Ladder and began to feel very repetitive by the end of the set.

Warpaint began their performance from behind a thick red curtain, casually overriding the house music with an instrumental jam, halfway through which the curtain was peeled back to confirm that the set had started. It was the perfect beginning to a very relaxed night, with plenty of dancing, giggling and tea drinking from a group clearly at home on the stage. The crowd-pleasing setlist suffered a little at the hands of the mixing desk towards to beginning of the night – with ‘Warpaint’ and ‘Stars’ turned up so loud that the vocals and guitars were crunchy with distortion – but by halfway through the set gorgeous vocal harmonies were ringing out flawlessly. The contributions from all three Warpaint mouthpieces were an obvious focal point for the night, and were stunning throughout.

In a live setting, Warpaint become a very different band. While their recorded work has a more relaxed and minimal kind of feel, on stage they inspire dancing and sound absolutely huge. This was particularly true of ‘Composure,’ which actually reminded me of Foals at times, and the band and audience were both feeling it. The music was matched perfectly with a covering of colour-shifting LED light panels, which set the mood nicely for each track without intruding. Things were stripped right back for a rendition of self-described Warpaint classic ‘Billie Holiday,’ during which one solitary person did their very best to get a slow clap going, causing bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg to mess up a vocal line and more or less collapse with laughter. Far from ruining the song, it felt like we were all in on the joke and that moment sticks in my mind as the most memorable part of the set.

The night was capped off with Emily Kokal’s solo rendition of ‘Baby’ and a hazy, jammed out version of older favourite ‘Beetles.’ This somehow managed to feel like both a crescendo and a fade-out, and bookended the set nicely. I’m not entirely sure why Warpaint aren’t touted more as a live band, but this performance was definitely proof that the band has even more to offer than their records suggest.

Share this review on Facebook