Crystal Castles // UEA, 23.11.12
"Alice led the masses, swaying, raving, sweating, while Ethan flooded the room with searing beats and the lightshow left strobes burned into my eyes."
I often wonder what the headline bands do before they go on stage at UEA. Nestled up in the offices above the venue, they can definitely hear everything that’s going on downstairs; the soundchecks, the baying crowd, the metaphorical tumbleweed that greets their tour support... LULS were given the opportunity to open for one of the most raucous acts in the business, and they were awful, providing absolutely no lulz whatsoever. They might as well rename themselves LULL, it’d be far more fitting.
Crystal Castles, on the other hand, were a fucking tour de force. Opening with ‘Plague’, then ‘Baptism’, the sheer weight of 1500 people seemed to crush in on me from all sides. There was no delay, no relent, and no sympathy for the entire duration. Alice led the masses, swaying, raving, sweating, while Ethan flooded the room with searing beats and the lightshow left strobes burned into my eyes. Any fears that Crystal Castles may have lost the urgency or the gritty, animal charm of their early years were completely dispelled, with their more grandiose stage set allowing, dare I say it, a performance complete, with almost no flaw whatsoever. A heady mix of old and new, threaded together by screams, shudders and battered drums Bruised, blackened, but overjoyed, my overriding memory of the night will be lifting Alice’s hand during one of her numerous stagedives, as if I were proclaiming Crystal Castles the heavyweight champions of the world.
Alex Throssell
