Hurts
The Cockpit, Leeds
03/10/2010

Siren pop seems to be all the rage at the moment, but we’re finding it hard to pass tonight’s support Clare Maguire off as just jumping on the bandwagon. Sure, there’s a predictably quirky outfit, complete with a feather headpiece, but Maguire’s howling vocals and the instantly catchy ‘Aint Nobody’ make her impossible to ignore. Although her music gets a little repetitive, we can tell she’s been bred to be a star and we expect we’ll be hearing a lot more from her soon.

As the headliners take to the stage, Hurts keyboardist Adam Anderson asks us to be gentle in our criticisms, but it hardly seems appropriate when their performance is as impressively honed as this. Soft, caressing ballads lull us into a false sense of security before the intro to ‘Silver Lining’ creeps in, heavy and rumbling like a foreboding thunderstorm. Certain lyrics, which on CD seem trite and hollow, are delivered with a passion which adds some much needed sincerity, while optimism shines through the tales of woe. Joking with the audience, singer Theo Hutchcraft throws cheeky winks until, with the lyric “you let your body burn like never before”, Hutchcraft raises one eyebrow at the precise moment to get us all flustered.

And it’s subtleties like this which keep us engaged throughout the duo’s performance tonight; a twist of a melody here, a key change there, rather than overblown dramatic gestures. A sinister cover of Kylie‘s ‘Confide In Me’ follows, and when Hutchcraft raises his arms up to the ceiling during closer ‘Better Than Love’ he looks like a grand conductor to those assembled at his feet, singing with their hands held high and still calling for more even after Hurts have well and truly gone.

Justine Trickett