Warpaint review: Compelling quartet gleam in fresh coat

Warpaint showed a more audacious side at Somerset House, writes David Smyth
New outlook: Warpaint
Gus Stewart/Redferns
David Smyth20 November 2017

Warpaint might have painted themselves into a corner with their second album. Blurred songs, atmospheric but difficult to cling to, were often beautiful but sometimes hard to love. Tired from touring, the Los Angeles quartet almost split up.

With a third release, last year’s Heads Up, they brightened the decor. At Somerset House, lights glimmered during New Song, unimaginatively titled but, with its pulsing beats and hummable chorus, indicative of an appealing new outlook. Other new songs such as Above Control, led by Jenny Lee Lindberg’s high, skipping bassline, offered useful changes of pace in the quest to wrest audience attention from the grand architecture for 90 minutes. Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman’s guitars and voices wove around each other, dense and fluid, with both women enjoying opportunities to dance wildly.

The square courtyard, domed stage and a stiff breeze made for some marvellous billowing smoke effects as instruments were attacked and hair was thrashed. Drummer Stella Mozgawa, less dominant among the layered guitars on record, was watchably audacious here.

​Wayman’s stream of consciousness lines on jerky, ever-changing early song Beetles showed the band’s strangest side. With the steady bass groove and wordless chorus of So Good, they were as uncomplicated as they get — still a long way from the bright lights of pop music, but untangling some knots and finding a way to creep out of the darkness.

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