Live Review: The Naked & Famous

New Zealand's The Naked & Famous enter dramatically. Striking lighting does a lot of the work, and lead vocalist Alisa Xayalith maintains a bit of mystery by lurking side of stage throughout first track A Stillness, one of the lovelier, more transcendental parts of their latest album In Rolling Waves. They continue with the grungier Hearts Like Ours, also from the latest record, which they've said was influenced by '80s post-punk but sounds more '90s to this pair of ears. Xayalith looks incredible in swathes of black clothes, her long hair cropped and bleached. Her voice is stunning, but Thom Powers' more gruff vocal is often too high in the mix, which detracts, particularly on The Sun, which is almost ruined by it.

They then shift to material from their first album Passive Me, Aggressive You, which embraces more of an electro, dream-pop sound. The crowd seem more excited about tracks from this record. Overall, it's a pretty confused vibe though. With tracks that traverse post-punk, indie-rock and electronica, we don't know where the band is going from song to song. Waltz is so dreamy it's almost weightless and doesn't seem to move the crowd at all, Passive Me, Aggressive You inspires a mosh and Punching In A Dream turns the place into a '90s house club. The combination of pop sensibility and lyrical immaturity in tracks such as The Mess and What We Want (“We just don't know/What we want/Just keep it trivial”) call to mind the musical spirit of Savage Garden, which is not ideal. There are times when The Naked & Famous sound like the soundtrack to a John Hughes film: the epic, daggy keyboard breakdowns summon the spirit of Molly Ringwald in pink taffeta crying in the corner of a high school formal. The Naked & Famous are a band not really sure of what they want to be. And we're left feeling very confused.