Live Review: Little Dragon, Kilter

Sydney kid Kilter is the support act tonight, bouncing away at a complex rig of live drums, trigger pads and sequencers. He’s slightly overenthusiastic about his own beats – which range from big, gloopy club sounds to brittle, staccato, Caribbean-flavoured trap – and he’s partial to the odd white gangsta hand gesture. But the audience digs it. By the end of his set, the crowd is mustered and cheering.

The vibe at 170 Russell is a little giddy, which is weird because the crowd has a 30-something, design-industry flavour – lots of thick-framed glasses and asymmetrical clothing. We’ll have to blame Yukimi Nagano for this; the Japanese-by-way-of-Sweden songstress appears on stage in a pink kimono and drops it to reveal a Barbarella-worthy, ice-blue, sculpted dress over fluoro Pro Hart-esque print leggings. She’s a sight to behold, if you’re into that sort of thing – a magical pixie of the art-rock scene.

Drummer Erik Bodin, Fredrik Källgren Wallin on bass synths and keyboardist Håkan Wirenstrand flank the tiny firebrand singer, hammering out Little Dragon’s sharp-electro beats in perfect precision. Nagano’s warbling blues vocals are slightly less precise and they fill the gaps with so much vocal delay it feels like she’s singing in a karaoke bar. Thankfully, Nagano’s stage presence is a distraction; her shaman/robot dance moves are plenty magnetic.

Bodin stands up to smash at the kick drum during Killing Me, revealing his own spectacular pair of patterned pyjama pants. His enthusiasm is slightly ahead of the crowd, who smile demurely through the watery bubbles of Pretty Girls. It’s not until the clanging cowbell beat of Summertearz that things really heat up, hands hit the air and the audience starts bouncing. Little Dragon carry us straight into Shuffle A Dream and then Paris, with a sick ‘80s squelch and that weird Wurlitzer-sounding breakdown.

Dancing in front of candy-coloured fluoro strip lights, Nagano flutters her eyes to the ceiling and raises her arms like she’s welcoming an alien spaceship; bouncing and shrugging her shoulders like a bass-music Karen O. When Ritual Union kicks off, the audience goes properly crazy, hollering along in the chorus and pumping enthusiastic fists, and your scribe has a sudden flash of lucidity about how weird dancing is. A handful of tracks later and Little Dragon are done, leaving a lot of sweaty punters in their wake. A good show, but not the greatest, though it’s hard to say why. Can’t help but wish they sounded more like their records.