crystal castles

Attention lavishes itself on front woman Alice Glass to the extent that it’s easy to forget that anybody else is sharing a stage with her; all the other band members just fade into the darkness. Most of the time Glass is jumping around the stage like someone’s attached large springs to her feet. Around her, strobe lights constantly flick on and off, the audience are only able to grab glimpses: its like someone has photographed the whole affair and we are seeing a series of photos detailing the sticky event in quick succession. Sound tracking this are beats that bleep and bloop, melding with waves of distorted synths that hit you with so much force that if you weren’t paying attention they could literally force you over. If there is only one criticism it is that the performance tonight is slightly more mooted then the last time they headlined this venue several months ago. The amount of time Alice spends swimming over the audience is considerably less, and there’s no climbing of the speaker stacks either. It’s as if security have had a quiet word in their ear and asked them to tone it done a bit. However, Crystal Castles still give a performance that could put a lot of other bands to shame and the chances are nearly everybody here will be back next time round.