Music > Live Reviews
To Kill A King
The Adrian Flux Waterfront
24/01/18
The warm up act to the warm up act, Josh Savage, was a very good Ed Sheeran impersonator. Whilst he oozed suave and was clearly incredibly technically and vocally accomplished, his lyrics rattle by at a cliché a second and wounded the soul far more than they pleased the ears.
Sheer enthusiasm and moments of alt-pop brilliance came next in the form of Childcare: think Glass Animals inbred with Coldplay (the lead even looked uncannily like Chris Martin). Things got a little bit silly, however, when he climbed the barrier and wandered through the crowd like the second coming of Christ. Sometimes, perversely, if a musician appears to be enjoying their own gig too much (bopping their head, pounding the air with their fist etc) it’s hard to take them seriously and at times it was headed that way with Childcare. But for parts, their sheer child zonked on sugar mania was infectious, with the lead guitarist furiously strumming his instrument (don’t) managed some proper Hendrix, over-the-head wizardry and made for one particularly interesting song finale.
Next came To Kill A King. Lumberjack shirted Ralph Pelleymounter (bedecked with new resplendent bushel of auburn beard) drifted onto the stage, trailing an aura of majesty, and launched into choice tracks from his earlier album Cannibals With Cutlery. Whilst the previous two acts had tried to seduce their audience with speeches or clowning around, this band’s years of experience shone through and they seemed to own the stage without any real effort at all. One second it was a tangle of mics and amps and aux cables and the next it was their moment in the spotlight. They fit the stage like they had been carved to lock together. Pelleymounter was a bashful M.C., telling us to pretend that there had been an encore so that they could slip in a few more songs without the hassle of trundling off stage then trotting back on again. Self-aware to the extreme, they asked us to cheer more loudly each time they “accidentally” name-dropped the release of their new album. By owning the cheesy baggage that comes with performing, they turned the normally contrived small talk whilst tuning up instruments into something laid-back and sincere. And never once did you get the impression they were sick of touring; there was no sense that this was just one of a dozen shows performed like clockwork. Instead, you felt that they were summoning up the lyrics and sounds, composing the music just for you, for the very first time.
Of course, their hit songs were just as good in the flesh, but it was their slightly more mediocre tracks that took on a new dimension. One of the beauties of live music is its unpredictability and this was the case with their middle of the road, humdrum tracks which suddenly became works of beauty. All the quiet technical wizardry and angelic harmonies that had slipped beneath the surface and been overshadowed by their flashier tracks during recording, now came to the fore. Hearing their new album, The Spiritual Dark Age, in the flesh cemented their freakish talent for experimentation: taking you from songs that made you dance frantically like a possessed ragdoll to songs that rocked you gently like a lullaby, then back again. To Kill A King are one of those bands that really must be listened to live, reminding you why recorded music is only a shadow of what the real thing can be.