Music > Live Reviews

Jungle

10/03/15

In many ways Jungle perfectly sum up the way the modern music industry works. They arrive, seemingly fully formed, with a handful of brilliant singles. Their album is a big hit and they sell out loads of gigs. What would have once taken a band five years to achieve now happens in little more than 18 months. No more slow career build. My only concern is the amount of bands who fail to repeat that success with their second album; I hope that’s not the case with Jungle.

The UEA was packed with the youngest audience I have ever been in; good job I had my teenage son with me to prevent me from looking like a total weirdo! I might have to consider plastic surgery if I’m going to continue to watch these top 40 acts though. Support Clarence Clarity provided an interesting warm up. His debut album ‘No Now’ is well worth a listen even if it could benefit from a bit of judicious editing. His live set was similar, too much going on I think, but definitely an artist I’ll be watching because he certainly has something.

The most impressive thing about the Jungle live show is how perfectly they managed to recreate their songs on stage. The trademark falsetto vocals were absolutely spot on, and the music was crisp and clear. If anything it was almost too perfect, a few rough edges would have made it seem more live somehow. They made full use of a great light show, with the band’s name picked out in bright white lights at the back of the stage and the crowd were all clearly really into it. I have to be honest though and say that midway through their hour long set I realised that I was a bit…bored. My one criticism of the band is that their music tends to sound very samey and because they have a handful of songs that are clearly better than the rest, there are times that the live show (as with their album) can dip a little. Still, these thoughts didn’t last for long as the extended outro to ‘Lucky I Got What I Want’ which led into ‘Drops’ before ending the main set with the brilliant ‘Busy Earnin’ banished any negative thoughts I’d been having.

I was a little surprised they didn’t end the set with their best song, but they came back for an encore of ‘Time’ and departed to mass adulation. I really don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t enjoy myself, because I really did. The band’s anonymity as people made it harder for me to fully engage with them and I would like to see them vary the pace of their music a bit more. Like I said, in days gone by few bands achieved so much in such a short space of time, so let’s see what albums two and three bring and I hope they are given the chance to continue to grow and improve.