Cerebral angular math-popsters and local boys Tall Ships play the haunt in anticipation of their debut LP’s release this winter – expect instrument swapping, crescendos and more crescendos.
Sharing a label with glitchy math-rock-but-not-ers Three Trapped Tigers as well as scando post-rockers Sleep Party People, Tall Ships are predictably as expert in post-Foals staccato as spring-loaded dynamics, though also rife with nods to more explicitly indie noughties acts Friendly Fires and Futureheads. Their guitars do shredded chimes as well as indie chord thrusts and elaborate picking, all to rhythms from the gushing to the tightly sprung, comprising syncopated grooves and anthemic crescendos alike. As you’d expect from such brainiac arrangements this all comes with pithy wordplay, chin-scratchingly relating love, plate tectonics and old age.
If this sounds like a familar recipe, it fails to get across the energy with which they transition between these disparate elements and hold back cymbal crashing peaks in favour of pent-up slow-burners until the vital moment. At that moment, and only at that moment, can you understand Tall Ships. On stage, this is made blindingly obvious as the notorious instrument swappers march between stations with equal parts sweat-dripping vigour and cool precision. When that crescendo comes, you’ll be glad for the jittery, complex path that brought you there, and rejoice in Tall Ships as if you always had done.
£7 adv + BF, 19:00-22:00.
For more information visit www.thehauntbrighton.co.uk
