Black Cab is up against it tonight. There is no fold back, they can’t hear themselves. Despite repeated calls to the sound tech, who seems to be AWOL, the situation stretches deep into the set. Andrew Coates (vocals) and James Lee (synths) press on, but Wes Holland (drums) seems to give up towards the end and exits stage left. This is a rough start to their east coast run, though only half a room is here to witness it. Tomorrow night, Black Cab will play a second show at Howler to a sold out crowd, and presumably the PA will be fixed.
What’s interesting about the fold back situation, from a punter’s point of view, is that it makes very little difference to their sound. At one point, Coates, Holland and Lee all step away from their instruments and gaze perplexed towards the sound desk, but a heavy field of digital loops has already been triggered. There is literally no one at the helm, yet the pumping soup of automated beats is flattening the room.
Now is maybe a good time to mention that I like the new Black Cab better than the old Black Cab. The Melbourne act rose to critical acclaim, if not fame, off the back of their 2004 debut, Altamont Diary. A concept album devoted to the tragedies of the Rolling Stones’ concert at Altamont Speedway in 1969, it skews towards psych rock and sun-bleached guitars. Their follow up, Jesus East (2006) threads sitars and shoegaze in a wall of experimental sound. On the Berlin-influenced Call Signs (2009), a post-punk fever dream is punctured by the proto-electro sounds of Kraftwerk. Here is where Black Cab, though objectively brilliant, gets me personally interested. The fibrous tugs of guitar, stretched long across sunset, give way to relentless, stalking beats. The atmosphere gets machine-heavy. Also, you can dance to it.
These days, post-Games of the XXI Olympiad (2014), Black Cab is essentially an electronic act and like most electronic acts, their roles on stage are a mystery. Coates has a laptop and a trigger pad, and what looks like a MIDI controller, and Lee is hemmed in by a bank of synthesizers. Holland smacks the shit out of electronic drum pads, and is clearly the worst off without a means to gauge the sound, but even he is dragged along by the locked-in groove of these rich digital blooms. Computers light the way.
The band sounds the same as it has for the past few years, like Bauhaus crossed with Chemical Brothers. Coates sings a little and comes across as an aging Ian Curtis, but the music lifts him up with these blissful arpeggiated runs. Opening Ceremony from Olympiad could be the peaking portion of a Jon Hopkins tune. Victorious, from the same album, has this spectral, long-fingered reach – a tune so nostalgic for late-‘90s rave culture, it’s almost cute. Black Cab’s latest single, Uniforms, dips into the Pet Shop Boys canon, swelling in deliriously on a synth melody. It, like everything else, is glorious, whatever is going on onstage. The band may be having a bad night, but the music rains like gold.
BY SIMONE UBALDI
Loved: The world-class visuals
Hated: The palpable frustration
Drank: Tequila
