These New Puritans / The Amersham Arms, London
Puritans fail to bring the rapture
Words Huw Nesbitt / Image(s) Lee Hooper
While various members of These New Puritans mingle unassumingly among the crowd during an interval brought on by failing equipment, one of the patrons is gripped by a wave a of prophetic fallacy. “This is boring!” the fat ginger male declares, impatiently. “This is fucking boring!” And a more precise analysis of tonight’s performance by one of the UK’s most hyped bands could not be given. Actually, there could. Contrived, pretentious, and artificial would also be apt.
Understandably, this gig was never going to be one for the fans: These New Puritans have gone to great pains in the weeks running up to the release of their admittedly great debut album, Beat Pyramid, to demonstrate how little they care about perceptions of them. And, unsurprisingly, tonight they’re not making any effort to dispel this carefully orchestrated image. They nail virtually every painfully silly thing I’ve seen, read or heard about them, starting with lead singer Jack Barnett’s ridiculous stage costume.
Fashioned in gold, the garment - an oversized chain mail vest with links shaped like leaves - hangs off Jack the same way your parents’ clothes did when you were five. I think he’s aiming at some sort of Gormenghast aesthete, but he appears more like a child extra from Maid Marian and Her Merry Men. The performance itself is as drab. Little dialogue, scant emotion, vague empathy. But rather than creating an atmosphere of tension through this detached stance, the band just seem bored. As they limp through their next single ‘Elvis’, I begin to wonder whether they even care about playing music or whether they’re so self-absorbed they’d have trouble wiping their bottoms without consuming their own effluence.
The fun and frolics really climax when Jack, living true to a statement given to the Observer Music Monthly, curls up on the floor and appears to catch 40 winks during an instrumental, much to the pleasure of photographers who’d been waiting patiently for him to do something remotely interesting. Bravo folks, but what is intelligent about stitching punters up for five quid so that you can scrape a living from acting like prats?
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