Bat For Lashes / Yeasayer
O2 Academy, Bournemouth
01/10/2009

Upon being blasted out of its natal speaker cones, Yeasayer’s music finds itself an instant home in the beautifully acoustic vaults of Bournemouth’s O2 Academy – a former Victorian theatre known until recently as The Opera House – where old meets new, gold plaster meets neon lighting, and influences collide. The band are spraying out a very cosmopolitan, very New York psychedelic, world music, electro-pop vibe. This is a synthesis as various as the band members’ own stage personas; a mix of muscle tops, suits, mohawk quiffs, gawky dancing and electronic drum kits set to ‘timpani’. The result is a triumphant blend, pitched in a place that everyone can enjoy – quirky enough to be considered alternative, but bereft of any misplaced need to be challenging. In short, it’s perfect and punctilious. A support act without compromise.

Headliner Bat For Lashes are an entirely different prospect, however, and much changed from the slightly sullen, dream catcher-toting outfit of their early days. Natasha Khan has bolstered her arsenal of sounds, mainly by ditching a large part of  the ethnic instrument collection in favour of a more large venue-friendly, electronic approach. For the most part it works well, and in those irresistible moments where the best material is on show – ‘Daniel’, ‘Priscilla’ spring to mind – the result is hair raising. Sadly, there’s also a lot of filler here, and a tendency to slip into theatrical melodrama. The encore duet between Khan and what seems to be her television-imprisoned evil twin, duly wheeled onto the stage by technicians, might have been more effective if it hadn’t been so reminiscent of Evil Edna from Willo The Wisp. It goes down a treat with the crowd of course, wind machine and all, but The Fly is left feeling a little undernourished…

Matt Golding