Pretty Girls Make Graves

The sun has got its hat on, hip-hip-hip hooray… for a while, at least. DiS is strolling along Oxford Street, two hours prior to our entering The 100 Club, when the heavens open and chunks of hail descend, en masse. We take shelter amongst the Virgin Megastore sale racks, combing ice from tangled hair with uncomfortably chilled fingers, when our eyes are suddenly distracted from copies of Turn On The Bright Lights retailing for a fiver. Pretty Girls Make Graves’ latest long-player, their third, sits among the new releases. No accompanying preview text, no pre-paid rack-out placement. No fuss, no bother, not a great deal of obvious interest. Good thing, then, that the quintet is in town to shoulder the plugging burden.

“We’ve a new record out, here, in the UK,” announces singer Andrea Zollo twice, at least. “It’s not out in the States yet, so it’s good to see it. Do we have copies? Okay, we have copies…” There’s a faint suggestion of surprise in her voice as she’s given the confirmation; there’s no shortage of surprise among the crowd, too, that the Seattle-ites don’t take this opportunity – one of only two UK dates – to promote their new wares in a more obvious fashion. Sure, new songs are delivered, each introduced as the professional musician should when facing the potentially unmoved, but the smattering is slight and far from representative of an album brimming with creativity and flair.

‘Parade’, which seems poorly positioned on said third album, Élan Vital, enjoys fresh wind in its sails this evening, Zollo absolutely bouncing to its jaunty rhythms; ‘Pictures Of A Night Scene’, too, is delivered with an electric urgency that strips the on-album version’s many layers back to a basic beat and brief saxophone blast from Jay Clark. It’s the one time that the band’s guitarist isn’t amusingly bobbing his head and shoulders along to the often complex arrangements he’s emitting; so far as visual spectacles go, DiS could watch his focused performance ‘til the Tube stops running.

Such renderings are few and far between, though, with material from The New Romance, album number two, enjoying the lion’s share of the set list. From the title track to the cacophonous climax of ‘All Medicated Geniuses’, the older songs are rabidly received by the front row, who respond to every handclap and sideways wink with unmatched enthusiasm; but the band’s apparent resistance to give their latest songs the airtime they deserve is mystifying. The inclusion of ‘The Getaway’ also seems odd: why fall back upon the tried-and-tested when so much new material needs to stretch its live legs, sooner rather than later? A solid display of the new over the old would have rendered the few poor reviews that have come Élan Vital’s way irrelevant; without the songs’ authors showing absolute faith, though, one comes away wondering if the doubters didn’t have a point.

Accomplished musicians they are, and a slick performance they easily deliver, but Pretty Girls Make Graves depart the stage having missed a trick: these old songs are great, a couple are fantastic, but most attendees tonight leave with little idea of what to expect from Élan Vital. With luck they’ll overlook the frosty receptions, as they should. Luck, though, rarely holds, as today’s odd weather only attests to.

Photo by Mic Wernej