WH Lung | Anna B Savage
New Century, Manchester
16th November 2024
Local heroes WH Lung return to a virtually full house for the first night of the tour promoting their new album Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates, with their usual Krautrock Synth Pop brilliance. MK Bennett checks in.
Having missed Pem due to trademark Mancunian Weekend traffic and weather, we were grateful to catch Anna B Savage, London’s current most brilliant musical export, with the vocal class of an old Rolls Royce, instantly knowable without visual knowledge, like listening to a holy alliance between Jane Austen and Jane Weaver. Outstanding, with a new album due January, which some of us will be running towards, a goddess with an emerald green spirit.
If every Indie Generation has a basic general formula, not 100%, but overall, say the 80s had The Velvet Underground and Punk, for example ( but not including The Fall because their umbrella falls over pretty much everything Indie ever made), then modern Indie owes a large amount to Krautrock or German Experimental composition if you prefer, that beautiful Motorik vibe now seemingly found in huge slabs of recent releases by the under 30s, and thank any and all deities for that.
WH Lung are defiantly Mancunian, apparent in the haircuts and the name, home to the greatest local Chinese cuisine known to man, Upper Brooke Street legends, not to mention having only one size of t-shirt on the first night of the tour. Coming onstage to a proper light show, strobes and all and spending a good portion of the gig in silhouette, they hit the sound full on with the delirious synthesised brilliance of Lilac Sky, a bass-driven beauty like an upbeat Spiritualized, and it is laser guided melodies that consistently marks their set, the constant reaching for greater highs and heights, the pushing on of boundaries that sets them apart. Already well-known for incendiary live shows, there are often hit peaks here, as shown by the crowd’s reaction, screaming and all. Pearls In The Palm, while lacking the video’s shell suits and trackies, is still magnificent, with its sequenced intro and Orange Juice guitar, the chanted chorus hanging in the air.
Bliss Bliss follows with equal excellence, an undiscovered outtake from New Orders Low-Life, another bassline of feral wonder, and the realisation that the Lung’s influence seems to be the recorded history of Mancunia, accidental or otherwise, it works so well that it just adds to the occasion and the importance of it. WANT sounds like The Sparks, who are Honorary Mancs probably, due to them being strange and different, with its colossal keyboard hook, causing Joe the singer to start dancing like he is speaking in tongues.
It is natural, intuitive music, grabbing you by the emotions, your feet and your jangly heart. They play freely across the three albums, Thinner Wine, like early Stone Roses when they mentioned local rivers, is more recent, the repetition building the chorus beautifully, followed by the brilliantly named Second Death Of My Face, which has yet another great intro, two children’s television robots talking about Synth -based pop or existentialism, or both. It is Pop incarnate, an aching anthem to something reminiscent of LCD Soundsystem, New York, via The Hacienda via The Russel Club. Nothing is, is next, and whoever is writing these intros deserves a Nobel prize of some description. A centrepiece of perfection, ninety minutes of this would have made everyone here happy, indie kids and indie pensioners dance together in musical union, a hallucinogenic masterwork to crack the sky with. Emotional.
Bloom And Fade is an up-to-date Echo/ Joy Division single, catchy as all fuck with a Cure/ Peter Hook bass and Hannett’s favoured drum pads; it’s a very Northern song, in a good way. Similarly, The Painting Of The Bay is a song for the cold side of the Pennines, an amalgamation of broken hearts and broken sounds for when the distinction becomes unclear. How To Walk is propulsive, like kerosene or paraffin, with excellent backing/ alternate lead vocals that blurs the instrumentation into the rain-soaked windows of Saul Leiter. Showstopper is pure 80’s melodrama, J Cope meets The Human League in a provincial disco. Seems like effortless brilliance as the synth hook fades out with the vocal.
With the strange new thing of encore etiquette, shouting just enough to get the band’s attention, they come back on to do Inspiration! This Can meets Japan chunk of treble high brilliance once again rallies the dancing troupes, another staggering bassline, a quick vote to give them the keys to the City. They finish with the swaggering cock sure synth beast blast of I Will Set Fire To The House, a future Mancunian stone classic that mixes Suicide with A Guy Called Gerald.
Nobody wanted the lights to go up despite the tired and weary souls onstage and off, and with a set this strong, fully expect them to be playing stadiums soon, but always remember you were here.
Please note: Use of these images in any form without permission is illegal. If you wish to contact the photographer please email: mel@mudkissphotography.co.uk
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