These New Puritans
Barbican, London
23/10/2010

In these testing times of war crimes, spending cuts and the oncoming rumble of apocalypse, it seems practically obscene to get huffy about pop music. But alas, lack of perspective or not, ‘Hidden’ – the second LP from These New Puritans – is most certainly something to kick up a fuss about. As this was something else from a band like no other: a grandiose, post-apocalyptic masterpiece which scaled heights of ambition that most bands can only dream of. In a universe governed by sexless indie-dorks, it would – and should – have been all-consuming. However, despite critical acclaim sales proved poor, press wore thin and in less of a snub than a piss in the face of artistic innovation, it was overlooked by the Mercury Music Prize. It deserved so much more. And that, of course, is what tonight is all about.

Performed with a 15-piece brass and woodwind ensemble, multiple prepared-pianos, live Foley techniques, taiko drums a children’s choir and an orchestra (the Britten Sinfornia) conducted by André de Ridder (Gorillaz, Monkey), ‘Hidden’ is not only to be performed as it was intended but it is to be framed, hung and exhibited in a venue which tonight plays host to a work of art. Pretentious? Yes. Undeservedly so? No – for the results truly are staggering. Love and hate, dreams and nightmares, attack and embrace – from the mournful brass beauty of opener of ‘Time Xone’ to the bowel-shattering announcement of ‘We Want War’ that follows, tonight the ‘Hidden’ live experience is rooted in conflict – primarily the conflict of violence and beauty. It’s helped by the fact it is executed via another juxtaposition, that of past and present, digital and classical. The addition of the Britten Sinfonia is truly magnificent. From the menacing child choir that declares war on ‘Attack Music’ to the fortress of percussion on ‘Drum Courts /Where Corals Lie’, it adds nuance and dimensions to what normally seems ‘close, but no 15-piece orchestra’.

It’s the cataclysm of sound this band deserves and standing amidst it is a frontman who learned and mastered musical notation in a few months purely for artistic control – Jack Barnett, unhinged, difficult and uncompromising. As fitting with the hip-hop influences that underpins ‘Hidden’, he fires lyrics with a jarring MC precision, twitching as he goes with the veneer of a young man born in the wrong age. Or, indeed, the wrong world. With the hour-long show drawing to a close the only pre-‘Hidden’ song of the night is performed, a gentle new arrangement of ‘En Papier’. The Sinfonia stand, soaking up the tsunami of awe and applause that washes over them. These New Puritans, however, choose to bow solemnly. You wouldn’t think this was the gig of their lives at all. Then again maybe it wasn’t, for it could easily have been a funeral – a place where banality went to die.

Stephen Kelly