Coasts @ Open
A calculated crescendo
Norwich may be feeling distinctly un-tropical as we dip our toes into June, but try telling that to the packed out audience in Open's club bar tonight. Coasts are still very much a word-of-mouth driven slow burner of a success story, initially fuelled by that sun-drenched single Oceans, but gathered their momentum through relentless touring, followed with the release of the debut album earlier this year. They are five good looking boys, what DIY might crudely describe as 'Indie Dreamboats' (not here in Outline – we are all about the music). The young audience has sorted itself with girls mostly at the front, and the majority of lads further back, but definitely not bar-hanging.
Opening tonight is a solo set from Huntar, who you might remember from last year's Radio 1 Big Weekend. Then, he played with a band. Tonight he looks slightly out of place, bathed in red light, surrounded on stage by the headliners' equipment, and performing to a backing track. It is as if he has broken into the storage cupboard that doubles up as the Photo Soc darkroom and started singing. Which is a real pity – he has a stunning voice, and the production is tip-top, elements of Bastille, or Years & Years. The closer, Love I Know, is a massive tune, worthy of the epithet 'summer anthem'.
Coasts rattle through their set with slick and well-rehearsed familiarity. It is a calculated crescendo, with each song building on the anthemic potential of the last. The band are tight, and frontman Chris Caines does a neat line in mike stand and monitor posturing. I worry at one point that he is thinking of swinging from the bar's suspended ceiling (I remember doing that once at a chemist shop re-fit, with disastrous consequences). Aspirational homage to The Killers, Foals, and Two Door Cinema Club show exactly where this band is aiming, but for the moment it is only the final number, Oceans, that releases their full potential, and the audience can finally join in with YouTube honed vocals on what is still Coasts' proudest moment.
