I’d seen The Wants play when I was down in Brighton this year for The Great Escape. Then, their mix of angular, post-punk style had whetted an appetite (review here) that could now perhaps be sated by a Monday night freebie at Stoke Newington’s finest, The Waiting Room.
PVA are the support. It’s not until they take to the stage that I’m reminded that I’ve seen them before. I spend much of their opening number trying to get my memory to work eventually realising that it was barely weeks ago at The Old Blue Last, a gig I chose to simply enjoy and make no notes about.
But I recall liking this trio. Indeed, I might have even said so in passing comment to members of this distinctive genre-hopping band when they left that stage. They begin with an electro-punk soundclash banger, a phrase that could be ‘I was feeling so high’ shouted over the top of the track by Ella. PVA don’t want to let you settle though and before long we’re embracing industrial strobes and samples with post-punk dance noise. “I’m losing my voice“, says Ella unsurprisingly before PVA go all Hacienda circa 1990 on us. They pack a lot into this half hour set but there’s still time for Josh to vocoder his voice and take us into skewed dance-pop territory. “Like Cabaret Voltaire crossed with The XX”, says Shane, an impressed and charming screenwriter from LA I chat with in the break between bands.
The Wants are two-thirds made up from members of those other prominent New York post-punkers, Bodega. I guess the maths behind that means you could call this a side project (of sorts).
Dressed all in black with a concessionary pair of red socks, the image is clearly important. They hurtle through their set; the urgent bass lines funking along whilst stalactite-shards of guitar stab into you. When Madison dances, it’s frenzied and angular; he bends into incredible poses like an action man with stiff joints.
Lyrically, The Wants urge us to feel the weakness as we pick up the pieces. They remind us that they have no intimacy and so are never vulnerable. The cold, clinical tone, deliberately done, heightens the dramatic intent.
It ends all too quickly. “We don’t have anymore”, says Madison after half an hour. But urged on by a crowd left wanting, a quick band chat leads to an encore of sorts; a strident instrumental piece that can’t fail to get us dancing.
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