The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule – Warpaint live in Vicar Street, Dublin – Sunday 26th March 2017
Just in case you think this is going to be an objective review I will preface it by admitting that I love Warpaint. It is hard to think of a more talented, beautiful and insouciantly cool group of women, either individually or collectively. Add to that 3 albums of music which are mainstream enough to fill concert halls but edgy and experimental enough to make you feel like you are in a niche Californian space-dub experiment, you will probably understand way. So enough of the hagiography, on with the show.
Returning to Dublin only seven months after their National Concert Hall show Warpaint managed to squeeze their audience and sound into the much tighter surrounds they now have another album worth of material to add to their canon. The new songs came quickly with title track Heads Up opening affair and Whiteout following and Dre following not long after. For some reason it took me until the dubby delight of Bess to fully engage with the experience, with Theresa’s guitarless dancing being the catalyst.
The song keep coming with No Way Out being another stand out with its bare, restrained intro exploding into a delicious stomp halfway through. Beetles too was another highlight with it rapped intro and dubby groove. Theresa switched to bass for So Good, with Jenny taking break from the low end to play some guitar. After the twin pairing of Intro and Keep it Healthy, Love Is To Die was another highlight with Theresa again abandoning her guitar for some unbridled dancing. He delight seemed to be consistent with how much all the band were enjoying the show.
Such was the crescendo at the end of the song I assumed it was the end but thankfully there were a few more songs. By way of introduction to New Song Emily gave us an acapella blast of Kiss From a Rose. New Song was her turn to dance guitarless morphing her long limbs into all kind of interesting shapes. For a finale we got the always stonking Disco//Very. Such was endorphin rush generated the lack of an encore didn’t really bring any disappointment . Hopefully they will keep coming back every seven months from now on.
