Live Review: London Grammar

For those curious, London Grammar is essentially The xx performing U2 covers on PCP.

Where The xx strip back pop songs so dramatically as to leave raw nerve endings naked and firing, London Grammar take big minor-key pop anthems, slow them down about 20-fold and give it all the juice they've got. The result is both a surface level simulacrum of their UK brothers and sisters, and another beast entirely, a group devoted to blowing up sombre histrionics to IMAX-level size and drowning you in dreamy pop syrup. It was a real trip to give ourselves up to such powerful earnestness, not so much shedding cynicism like a snakeskin, but having it torn away from us like the cladding on those frail houses featured in grainy footage of nuclear bomb testing.

Several things hung with us as we left the Opera House after their debut performance: primarily, obviously, was Hannah Reid's voice. It sounds like it spontaneously came into being in some cathedral somewhere and attached itself to the elfin singer. Your mileage will vary on the way she utilises it, but you couldn't deny its spectral muscularity, especially in the Concert Hall. She positioned herself apart from the group, physically and figuratively, and that isolation brought her lyrics into sharper focus.

Also of note were the visuals. A widescreen monitor depicted a number of vistas all linked by their 'epic-ness': northern lights, red cosmic rays warping over a blue planet, a wildfire smouldering across a night-time savannah, mountain peaks breathing snowy air into the void. The effect was striking, framing the brooding pop band as anonymous silhouettes. The brightest moment of candid joy came from the rainbow flag thrown up during the encore. It was perfectly timed; the thundering applause felt righteous and cathartic.