Prior to their deservedly heaving, hot as heck headline show, Secretly Canadian signings Exitmusic warm things up nicely, not that an increase in temperature within a room already at Amazonian humidity is altogether desired nor necessary...
Standell-Preston et al. then emerge to piece together the intricate jigsaw of a thing that is their stage setup. You sense that they function thus as only they are capable of completing such a complex feat, as innumerable wires are trickled across the stage like liquorice lace on the carpet of a bittersweetly-toothed glutton. Standell-Preston, in the sort of skirt not seen since caked in mud during rabid, pitchfork-heavy early modern witch hunt, sips tea and exchanges pleasantries with eager members of an appreciative, if never overly avid multitude. She makes a change from the lager-quaffing rapscallions that all too often get all too much attention in these realms, and it's one as revitalising as whatever strain of tea it is that she's nursing.
However if Native Speaker is and was one of the finest works to have drifted into the inbox over the course of 2011, live, it becomes an altogether more rampant fiend: Katie Lee's keys bubble and blurt as if a thousand rings are pulled every time she caresses her Nord, while drummer Austin Tufts and multi-instrumental marvel Taylor Smith come together to form the core, the rocky foundation into which the beyond-quirky pop songs of the LP may be carved. That they're flanked by Lee and Standell-Preston, whose incomparably angelic voice may only be paralleled to that spread honey-like over Blue Hawaii's Blooming Summer (coincidence? I think not...) ensures an idiosyncratic experience bordering on the immaculate, the ideal.
Fearsomely intelligent a troupe, each track is introduced by thalassic-sounding, warped vocal interludes, imbuing the show with the sense of a swelling, crashing, then receding sequence, clatter coming from the impacting dual drumming of Glass Deers. Becoming something of a psych wig out that sounds like Foot Village fronted by Matias Aguayo and backed by a supernal chorale, the result is a looser, more fluid work that remains as tight as its incarnation in vinyl. They must know just how extraordinary and exceptional a band they've become, although they're almost indubitably too lovely to admit to it. The claustrophobic shimmy and twitch of Plath Heart is tonight opened up, its contents freely spilled, while they conclude joyous proceedings with an astoundingly choral take on Native Speaker. Were Panda Bear to initiate a summer camp, you imagine he'd have his scouts chirruping this particular tune before and after every tinfoil-enslaved meal. Furthermore if during Exitmusic's set you're intermittently left to gaze around the stage, startled, in search of from whence the vocals come so androgynous and rich is Palladino's voice, throughout BRAIDS' showing, unorthodox and offbeat sounds come from the least likely origins as guitars gurgle bass lines and keyboards simmer with guitar luster, while the vocals remain high, mighty, and supreme for the duration. As such, an arresting Peach Wedding is ushered in by Smith's cerise Epiphone sounding like a synth run through a life support machine as doleful undulations seep out from an amp barely the size of a conventional household toaster. When it comes to ATP Concerts, the rose-tinted specs of gig promotion, the allure is such that the danger is for all things to instantly appear more radiant than they may be in reality. Tonight however BRAIDS fully bloomed, and emitted the grandest of finales befitting the greatest of records.
