Telepathe / Barden’s Boudoir, London
Telepathe get dark on London’s ass
Words Kelly Fiveash
Photography Burak Cingi
Chants and hisses and brutal kisses, middle distance stares, prog-punk samplers, killer hooks and loose percussion that delivers a hypnotic drum march from modern-day banshees who make you wanna dance. This is Telepathe, and they’re here tonight to get “dark on your ass”.
(Hard)core members Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gagnes, fresh from a US tour with The Kills, come on like yin and yang beat poet sisters/lovers. Their ethereal, cascading drone, disorientated harmonies and trance-verging-on-minimalist music draws heavy parallels with the likes of Brooklyn playmates Yeasayer and Gang Gang Dance. There’s a little bit of grime production, and injection of Can and some pure pop Björkisms thrown in for good pleasure too.
Performance-wise, Telepathe keep things simple. There’s a punky nonchalance that carries with it a surprising amount of charm. In some ways these girls, who are ably supported tonight by moustachioed daddio Ryan Licero from Mirror Mirror on guitar, embody a certain shambolic, anti-theatre quality that is so engaging precisely because of their jabbing carelessness with the instruments they play.
That’s not to say that the gathered Motherfuckers here tonight miss out entirely on a little interplay from a wired and clammy Livaudais, who several times during the performance drags her skinny butt onto the dance floor, clutching her mic and delivering her homebrew of undulated dub. Of course, this is a trick often conjured up by preppy, Dan Deacon-types who like to mingle with the fluorescent faces in the crowd. What’s markedly different here, though, is the visceral nature of her act that interweaves so well with the detached coolness oozing from Gagnes on stage.
The band’s final song, ‘Chromes On It’, with its repetitive, wraithlike lyric “falling down, coming out, on the real side” seems as appropriate a chant as any for Telepathe’s skewed extrasensory perception.
