Fang Island - Madame Jojo's 07/09/10 review

There was palpable excitement inside the cramped but beautifully designed Soho venue that was to beckon Fang Island to the stage on Tuesday night. Embarking on their first UK tour proper since humbling SXSQW and releasing their fantastic eponymous debut, Fang Island were greeted by a crowd of devotees, who had snapped up the tickets for this intimate concert. Madame Jojo’s is an interesting venue for concerts, having it’s history entwined with Soho’s fondness for cabaret and performance. While it still addresses this audience, club night White Heat does a marvellous job of bringing up and coming US bands to it’s raised platform stage.

It’s rare that for a debut album to sound both so musically accomplished, carefree and confident of itself- but this is what Fang Island acheived, labelling their music as ‘for people who like music’. Blanket statements aside, that’s not far off the mark. Their sound traverses technical musicality and indie-pop accessibility, and in truth it’s hard to refuse their infectious melodies. The opening salvo ‘Dream of dreams’ and ‘Careful Crossers’ sets the tone, a cascading wall of arpeggiated fretwork building to a rousing choral chant, before descending into a power-riffing and headbanging. These moments took in all the joyous elements of classic rock, reperformed with elation. The shared vocal duties of ‘Daisy’’s lyrical ambiguity brought all four guitarists to the fore, whipping the crowd into a joyous frenzy with it’s indecipherable ‘ooh’s and ‘woah’s.

Fang Island’s appeal is simple: it’s enjoyable music, both to listen to, to watch, and seemingly to play. The band smile gleefully throughout, bassist Michael Jacober frequently pogoing as the guitarists in the band headbang through colourful, starry hoodies. Epic, impatient number ‘Sideswiper’ closes the set, it’s juggernaut riffing and harmonised solo-work giving way to a touching vocal line over a reverb-drenched four-chord round. And then the song’s coda, a euphoric piece of music that elicits smiles all round, a playful guitar line darting over a strummed rhythm. It’s a majestic moment and a towering feeling of warmth and love spreads through the crowd. We look at each other, beaming. The band leave the stage to a rapturous applause, only to come back for a real, proper encore. Initially, the band seemed to tune up- but this bled through to the opening bars of a song that seemed familiar, but it couldn’t be, could it? And in hindsight, an indulgent retelling of Mariah Carey’s ‘Always be my baby’ was perhaps the perfect way to end this concert. It had the crowd with lighters in the air, arms waving high, everyone in the room singing along. Fang Island seem rather good at effecting that kind of atmosphere, and this deeply enjoyable concert was strewn with such moments of connectivity between band and audience. It’ll almost be a shame when the band inevitably gain their deserved recognition and start playing the larger venues, because seeing them at the height of their powers in an intimate and close venue like this was a real treat.

First published in The405.