Highasakite, Village Underground, London 25 May 2016
I saw Highasakite last night, for the second time in three days (after their Great Escape set), and I feel even more incoherent than usual. I’m not going to do a song-by-song recap (not my style), but I’ll try and convey how blown away I was by this show, my fourth time seeing them.
At Great Escape they had 30 minutes; here, we had the luxury of about 90 minutes, and they didn’t flag, they were as sharp and emotive at the end as at the beginning.
I’m going to start off on a somewhat shallow note. Some bands make me think, “Oh, I should try a little harder to dress more interestingly,” (I’m already a bit of a clotheshorse at times, but I’d like to dress as if I was going on stage every night, heh), and Highasakite are definitely one of them. They always have quirky hip casual style down perfectly. I noticed Marte, Trond, and Kristoffer all wore the same knee socks with a stylized heart logo on them and I was so curious: coincidence? Is it a brand that they just happen to like? Does it mean something? Did Ingrid and Øystein have them on too (they could’ve been hidden under their trousers)?
They’re known for striking lighting sets, too; this time around they’ve swapped their masses of smaller lamps placed around the stage for five massive ones at the back, which lead to especially dramatic backlight moments. So even before a note is played, they’re compelling to look at on stage.
A photo posted by j. (@nooneislost) on May 24, 2016 at 2:56pm PDT
Their set focused on their new album, Camp Echo, out just a couple of days ago. As I mentioned earlier, it’s dark; dancier than their earlier stuff, but yes, dark, like how you can dance like hell to Stromae but it’s that kind of desperate cathartic dancing you do when things are hard. This feels like an album very much of this moment. Ingrid has said in interviews it’s political, it’s angrier than their previous music – I mean, the name is a Guantanamo reference – and it pulls at you. The whole album feels like a prayer – to heaven, if that’s for you, but really to the whole world: “please don’t let things be like this.” Songs like “My Mind Is a Bad Neighborhood” and “God Don’t Leave Me” and “I Am My Own Disease” are heavy with trauma; just because you can shift yourself to the beat doesn’t make them celebrations, by any means.
No matter what they play, as a band they just feel enormous live; you feel like this is music that matters, that has heft and emotional weight, and especially this night at the Village Underground. Soundwise, I always notice Trond’s drums a lot. For some bands, percussion seems to mainly be standard filler, mostly background noise, but here they’re thunderous, they have as much of a voice and as much to say as any other element of the band.
Highasakite live tends to amp up the emotional pull of their songs anyway, and with the new ones, I felt this a thousandfold: so much grieving, so much pain, that feeling of a prayer being sent upwards and outwards to anyone who might listen. Ingrid’s voice is stunning, agile and gorgeous and evocative and able to tell these kinds of painful stories in stark, true ways: nothing feels overblown or exaggerated, just real. The hymnlike harmonies on “God Don’t Leave Me” could kill someone with sorrow, even more so live, and especially how the song ends with the sound of an air raid siren bleakly repeating.
There were moments during their set where a handful of lonely notes from Kristoffer on guitar – starkly audible as intended, because the crowd was mostly spellbound into shutting up (thank goodness) – made me feel like my heart was cracking open; the world was too much and I couldn’t take the weight of the things that guitar line was telling me.
Kristoffer plays both guitar and flugabone (… as a kid in high school band I would’ve called this a flugelhorn; are they the same thing? I need to go Wikipedia this more) and is a wonder, for reals. On the flugabone he hunched over, standing on one leg, gesticulating with one arm. He played the guitar with that kind of verve, too, jumping around on one leg. Oh yeah, he also plays guitar a lot with a bow. Basically, dude, you are my new favorite for real, I tip my hat to you!
A photo posted by j. (@nooneislost) on May 24, 2016 at 2:54pm PDT
They’re all so alive on stage, really – I don’t necessarily mean in terms of bouncing around, but just that you can tell they feel the music they’re playing to the bone, they embody it, they’re making this amazing transcendent thing happening and you can see it when Marte tips her head back, eyes shut, during a song, with Ingrid’s fearless, taut dancing, with everything they all do.
This review so far probably sounds like the audience wanted to weep the whole time, but that’s not true: there were glorious lighter moments too, like new single “Golden Ticket,” one of the songs the audience was most happy to sing along with – and how synthy-perfect is that one? (I love watching both Marte and Øystein play, and I was intrigued that they swapped places at their synths for one song! Why??? I’m not technically clued-in enough to know!)
Ingrid thanks the audience frequently during sets, but doesn’t tend to otherwise chat that much; again, like I said about K-X-P a few days ago, it’s rare that a band can be low on the interaction scale and yet draw me in so incredibly much. But it’s a given here, it’s easy, when you’re presented with everything I’ve just rambled about, is it any wonder you sort of stagger out, eyes wide with wonder and gratitude at what you’ve just witnessed?
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