Live Review: Mutemath - Corner Hotel

In their home country, Mutemath are at Grammy-nomination level, regularly filling out large theatres and generally doing rather well for themselves. Now, after receiving some triple j attention, as well as a spot at the Groovin' The Moo festival, Mutemath are onstage at the Corner Hotel, playing to a sold-out room on their first-ever Australian tour.

The New Orleans outfit present themselves immaculately. Their performance is utterly spotless in almost every regard; musicianship, stage presence, careful sculpting of arousal gradient through song choices – it's all A+ stuff. Yet, the fact that they are so calculated and presentable is quite possibly their weakest link. Everything is so dialed, there's almost no risk left to play with. Even the 'risky' parts – say, impromptu percussion jams, a lot of audience interaction – are executed in a way that seems almost over-rehearsed. And this is where it gets tricky, as they are clearly giving their all for the benefit of an excellent performance in all regards. Though it's a bit hard to escape the clinical nature and potential lack of intimacy when performing one's own material, as opposed to playing it.

For the record, it's not that they're not a creative band. On the contrary, Mutemath exhibit a very distinct character, evident in their left-of-centre approaches to both performance and sound design. Hats off too to possibly the radest band-entrance ever. All four members make their way to the stage from the back of the room, through the crowd, MPC/percussion in full New Orleans second-line swing, adorned by a clothesline of fairy lights. Wait, what!?

Mutemath's album material is, at heart, very exploratory and expansive in the realms of production techniques. The playing is certainly there, but the albums go far beyond the concept of a 'band', much in the same sense as the un-tourable nature of something like Sgt Pepper. As a four-piece of shit-hot, multi-instrumentalists (as well as the addition of backing tracks), they certainly can pull it off. But the real beauty of live performance lies in the difference between the album experience and the pared-back, live, raw and risky nature of performance. So, save for extended sections and reworking of form, the relentless and subversive demon that is the click/backing track drives the whole thing into the realm of the polite and the inoffensive.

It's as if they present themselves as if it were a stadium show (ignoring the fairly awkward screens either side of stage projecting a live feed of the band; great if one's natural view of the band is that of ants on a box, yet when the band is the same size as the projections on screen...). Confidence, charisma, focus – all in such abundance and with the pairing of a very well-executed stage production, you'd swear you were in Vegas, nay, Palms at Crown.