There may not be a better season than late Autumn to go see The Horrors play live. By this point, having achieved near-legendary status within the UK goth-rock scene (although this definition feels increasingly restrictive with every new album they release, as their sound grows ever more complex and articulate), they are a band with a very definite flavour to all that they do. The season of lengthening shadows and deepening chills feels like a perfect backdrop to their specific brand of exploration of meaning. Throughout their many years of making music, the one constant thread linking together all of their experimentation has been an ability to always find and channel a spark of light in the deepest shadow; it is this ability, indeed, that colours their sound and makes it deeply melancholic and sharply hopeful, reflective and empowering at the same time, a descent into darkness culminating into unexpected illumination.
Their latest album, ‘Night Life’, which provides the backbone for the setlists on this tour, is even more textured, synth-infused, and earnestly soul-searching than its predecessors, and those who have loved listening to the studio version would no doubt have been excited to see the live counterpart. This is, after all, a band with a well-deserved reputation of being impressive performers, which will no doubt be carried on by the updated line-up they brought to Cardiff’s Y Plas, a venue at the heart of the local students’ union.
If anyone felt that this was somewhat of a vibe mismatch between the venue and the artist, this is not quite, or at least not these days, the kind of band you typically imagine performing at a students’ union - that worry was quickly put to bed by the staging. A smoke machine working overtime, restless beams of light piercing through it in all directions, and a backdrop screen on which mesmerising images of jellyfish floated shroud-like by all contributed in creating the sensation of stepping into a space that felt completely other, a thousand miles removed from the grind of daily life. Ever a band with a taste for the atmospheric, and with an almost obsessive attention to detail in all that they do, even before they set foot on stage, the Horrors managed to make their audience feel like they were stepping inside their latest album, an eerie dreamscape that comes to life only at night and where just about anything might be possible.
First, however, came the support act, and this was one of those cases in which the support feels like a truly inspired match for the headliner. Slate are a local band with an ever-growing following and a fair share of gothic suggestions interwoven through their own, industrial-rock-based sound (think Bauhaus if they were born and raised in Splott). They shared with the headliners the same taste for an intense, earnest stage presence, a habit of composing big, sprawling musical tapestries which feel like dark-hued landscape paintings, and a love for darker things seen from an unexpected angle. Their set included familiar tunes and new material alike, and showcased a clear growth that makes them a band very worth being excited about. It felt not necessarily like the passing of a torch - through their recent studio album and live outings alike, the Horrors have made it very clear that they are going nowhere, but like a moment of deep syntony between two generations of artists treading down the same paths to very different destinations.
The support set definitely left the room primed for what came next, and there is a touch of something like dark magic in music that can make you forget the world outside the venue to plunge you completely into the here and now, which - from the very first chords of ‘The Silence That Remains’, one of the most intense tracks in the new album and a perfect set opener - this performance very much did. Fittingly for a band that always shows such meticulous attention to detail, so many factors came together to evoke this slightly suspended, profoundly emotional state in which the music could truly come to life. There is certainly something deeply satisfying in seeing a band that has been doing this for a long time come on stage and do what they do best, but to chalk it all up to experience would be profoundly limiting. The new line-up works seamlessly, somehow feeling like the most natural evolution possible of the band; Amelia Kidd in particular proves to be a tremendous asset with her ability to spin ribbons of dream-like synth through tunes old and new, giving the music an additional, almost-liquid quality that fits the band’s overall vibe perfectly. ‘Still Life’, one of the band’s most intense songs, feels like wading into dark water; ‘Sea Within A Sea’, in many ways the band’s signature song, introduced by vocalist Faris Badwan as ‘From The River To The Sea’ in a truly powerful nod to Palestine, seems to become animated with layer upon layer of feeling expressed through music. Badwan himself is an exceptionally charismatic performer, but there is a raw earnestness to all that he does on stage, something in the way that he just allows himself to openly feel as he sings, that sends something electric rippling through the audience. His chemistry with bass player Rhys Webb is also of a quality rarely seen on stage; these are two musicians who know each other’s craft inside and out, and they bounce off each other seemingly on instinct alone.
The most powerful moment of the evening came, perhaps, with the encore. Opened by the trance-like ‘Lotus Eater’, easily the most atmospheric - and possibly the most intensely emotional - track on the new record, it came to an unexpected peak as the band delivered a cover of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’. In the hands of the Horrors, the beloved love song turned into a fight anthem for the present times, its singular you morphed into a collective you, and the emphasis on its lyrics shifted to deliver a message of remarkable empowerment in a time when helplessness is such a commonplace feeling. As Badwan intoned, “We can beat them”, in a remarkably Bowie-like pitch, it felt like all the weight of something very powerful had landed behind the words. There it was, that light in the darkness; the whole room felt it.
If there truly is a magic in music, then something very much like magic was performed at Y Plas on that Tuesday night; something that goes beyond a very successful date on a band’s tour, and speaks to the transformative way music can touch and influence the world outside of the venue’s doors.
Chiara Strazzulla