Live Review: Deerhunter, Blank Realm, Black Vacation

Black Vacation bring the exact level of coolness warranted for supporting everyone's favourite Brooklyn weirdos Deerhunter tonight. Singer Daniel Ford's downbeat vocal (think a way less harsh Kitchen's Floor) works against the pretty melancholy of their guitar work, which is sometimes buried in reverb and sometimes floats to the top of the fuzz like a ray of sunlight in a dank bedroom. Every song is lifted by the confident, no-nonsense drumming of Michaela Chin, and Glazed and Black Vacation are highlights, both songs working with the sunny/resigned dichotomy that makes this band interesting.

From misanthropic to totally fucking raucous, Blank Realm are freaked-out and theatrical (not in an Amanda Palmer way; in a cool, rock'n'roll way). The band get around singer Dan Spencer spending most of the time stuck behind the drums by making everyone else as watchable as any other band's frontman. They're all in constant motion, dancing and hip shaking and hair waving throughout this spikey, dystopian set, and the crowd is soon following suit. Spencer's voice is snarly and cheeky (a weird descriptor for a guy that looks like the IT manager fiancé of your best friend from high school, but there you go).

Part of the excitement of Deerhunter will always be the possibility that something really nuts is gonna happen. But from the first track, a beautiful, wafting version of Halcyon Digest's Earthquake, it all stays pretty tame. Singer Bradford Cox isn't even wearing a dress. The first half of the set is, surprisingly, a bit of a hit-parade. Halcyon Digest's dreamy anthems from space are beefed up with waves of feedback and incredibly loud guitars, wielded by Cox and two other dudes who seem to have a side game going of being first and second place in a hottest babe on the planet contest. Between songs the band mess around with weird effects and droning atmospherics.

It's incredibly affecting, and you wanna close your eyes and just let these songs pulse their way inside your chest, but you also don't want to take your eyes off Cox, whose voice and movements are so expressive and charismatic, even without any of the off-the-wall dramatics that he's famously (albeit rarely) shown in other performances. The best moment comes when Desire Lines melds into Monomania highlight T.H.M. Both songs have the kind of spiralling guitar lines that almost hurt they're so perfect, and the transition between the two is effortless. The second half of the set brings more experimental tracks from earlier album Microcastle, but by now we're primed for anything, and closer Helicopter well and truly blows what's left of the crowd's collective brain out the back of its head.