By the time I arrived at Gorilla, Honesty were halfway through their opening song. The walls were shaking. The pure volume of the music, the aggressive rumble of the bass, would not normally be advised in a support act – this much intensity could surely threaten to steal the thunder of the headline band. Thunder is an apt word, too – I had to repeat my order three times before the bar staff could hear what drink I wanted.
As I moved to the front of the room, I was struck by another crucial element of the band’s persona. Hanging in front of the stage was a screen of material, onto which they project a series of captivating images and lyrical vignettes throughout the whole show. You can see the silhouettes of the band through this screen, you can watch them move and dance, see the ways in which they interact, but they remain removed from the audience in a way that feels different to anything I’ve seen before. It’s such a simple and effective way of setting up a stage, that I can’t believe it’s the first time I’ve seen such a thing.
Quite why they do this is a slight mystery, but then that’s kind of the point. Honesty sell themselves as a collective – not a band in the traditional sense, but a group that thrives on collaboration and rotation. They don’t forward themselves on the stage, because they don’t only forward themselves in their music.
One of the interesting things this leads to, at Gorilla at least, is a feeling that it would be hard for an Honesty live show to replicate the album they released earlier this year. They don’t have a big enough bus to bring all their collaborators or a big enough stage to hold them.
While rapper Kosi Tides was there, and they were able to give us a straightforward version of ‘North’ because of that, softlizard was not – and so we get a remix, an interpretation, of ‘Measure Me.’ And off the back of such a great album, you would expect them to be playing stand out tracks such as ‘No Right 2 Love’ – but without Liam Bailey there, they don’t offer a watered down version.
This sums up what is really the most exciting thing about Honesty, though. They feel always on edge. They feel changeable, daring, like you don’t know what they’re next move is going to be. And during this short, half-hour set, they feel alive with adventurous musicianship – something which is only added to by the images on the screen. They have to be one of the most exciting acts in the UK right now.
For those who are yet to listen to them, their music is hard to describe. While I was at the show I was very aware that I, the most anti-dance music person among the Picky Bastards, was watching a performance that could very easily be categorised as dance. At times they make me think of Massive Attack, at others UNKLE, and, on occasion, Young Fathers. But all of those reminders are only fleeting because, really, Honesty are something all their own. I saw them described as ‘electronic shoegaze’ the other day, and I can’t get any closer to describing them than that.
Whatever their genre, they’re live show is irresistible. I stood in awe for the full thirty minutes and wished with all my soul that they had another thirty minutes or so to go. Fair play to bdrmm for bringing them on tour, because that is a tough act to follow night after night. Bdrmm put on a show, too, but I would be surprised if a lot of the people in the crowd weren’t mainly talking about Honesty while they made their journey home.
Words by Fran Slater
Picky Bastards 