Are King Krule being sarcastic? 17 year old London resident and band leader Archy Marshall speaks in a blank monotone between songs at Saturday. There is a studied air of, if not indifference, a blank disquiet. Looking like a cross between Michelle Shocked and Billy Bragg and sounding like the Artful Dodger.
The music, cheerfully called Darkwave, is a mix of jazz and lo fi rock, and given the quiet nature of the music, it is to King Krule's credit they are a mesmerizing band. The young act sound like only themselves and it is deeply felt but cooly presented teenage trauma unit singer-songwriter deal. They play "Bleak Beak" early and follow it up with "a song about a reptile" and the audience is more than polite, they are interested,
Later still he introduces "Lead Existence as "an accurate description of myself" and the short (a minute or so) track with its Hawaiian sounding guitars comes across like an introspective Tyler: From finding the world quite strange to not caring about his ill health to falling into the blues, it isn't a particularly cheerful state of affairs, but, somehow, just by singing it Marshall finds hope.
Towards the end he plays "Out Getting Ribs", recorded when he was 15 I guess, "I feel hate running through my blood girl, don't you want me back?" An excellent song and the band clicks just as they have ben doing all night long. though they have some stage presence, they don't have nearly enough. In a newspaper boy cap and his guitar slung high, Marshall catches the eye but he doesn't really know what to do with it. The darkness of his sound, all dubstep beats and hard bass and jazz inflections, doesn't lend itself to lively up yourself representation. But maybe next time, King Krule will have found a way to connect a little closer to their audience. . "We're going back home to London tomorrow" Archy mentions. Don't worry, they'll be back soon and we can find out.
Grade: B+
