Reviewed on Saturday January 24
“We’re Coldplay, this next song is called ‘Sky Full Of Stars’. Thank you.” Thus Tom Krell of Chicago introduced the fifth song he and his band, How To Dress Well, launched into at The Aurora Spiegeltent in Sydney’s Festival Village. The tongue-in-cheek reference – Krell’s long-running gag was that his band was sold as “mid-level America”, somewhere “below Coldplay but above a local stand-up comedian” – was ridiculous but set the tone for the night; at once hilarious and stunningly beautiful.
As a purveyor of what has been deridingly labelled ‘PBR&B’ (read: hipster rhythm and blues), it was difficult to know what to expect from Krell and his trio of players. His third and latest LP What Is This Heart? is quintessential headphone music, delicately produced, swerving between bravado and brittle. His live show, it turns out, pays pitch-perfect homage to this Jekyll And Hyde vibe.
By midnight, as we were ushered into the space Krell himself described as a “weird circus tent”, the audience might have been more subdued than normal. But across a set that took in much of HTDW’s latest album, question-and-answer sessions and a bit of that stand-up comedy (Krell deadpanning: “this is a hair metal song, thanks”), the quiet was laudable. ‘Mesmerising’ is a phrase that gets bandied about in all sorts of promotional material but from the opening ‘A Power’ to the last, when Krell slipped some Young Thug lyrics into an otherwise pretty track, the tent was pin-drop silent.
That attentiveness had a lot to do with Krell – chest-beating, mic-snatching, Michael Jackson vocal-ticcing away – who was a force to be reckoned with. Restarting songs when things weren’t just so and throwing himself into tracks, his dedication to his craft was impressive. But equally responsible were a keyboardist, guitarist and drummer who, alongside the able frontman, recreated a sound so full and pure that it belied their size and almost outgrew the venue. As the night came to an end that wicked contrast between well-drilled and slapstick came to the fore again when Krell ranked the gig himself – “eight out of 10, I’m tired but it was pretty good”. We knew, as we walked out into the hot night, that that was a blatant underestimation. Just as we knew we’d just witnessed the best mid-level band in America live in concert.
