Slow Club @ The Caves, 13 Dec
“Are you ready for a string of miserable songs about my feelings?” Rebecca Taylor asks, early on in the show, really hammering home the transition that Slow Club have undergone through the course of their career. They are no longer the twee darlings, exchanging yelps with maddening glee and a knowing wink. Now, they're sultry crooners, delivering delicate odes to love and loss with a miserabilist streak that suits them down to a tee.
The set is mainly drawn from their summer release, One Day All Of This Won't Matter Anymore, with the odd dip into Complete Surrender and Paradise; nothing from their debut. Many tracks from ODAOTWMA are performed solo by either Taylor or fellow Slow Clubber Charles Watson, giving the occasional sense of discord between them. While both bring important elements to the band (Rebecca's urgent and frenetic stage presence or Charles' laconic, honeyed delivery), the best songs are usually the ones that see them come together in full-bodied harmony (bar Taylor's show-stealing Champion).
The crowd take a little while to get into the groove of proceedings, perhaps expecting the raw, high-energy bombast that Slow Club shows from a few years ago had, but the strength of composition and songwriting quickly wins them over. And then the encore (where “Christmas begins”, Rebecca says) simply melts them down, even when it's opened with the self-declared “most depressing song about Christmas ever”. They play four tracks from their 2009 Christmas EP Christmas, Thanks for Nothing, culminating in two songs delivered acoustically from the middle of the crowd. We reach fever pitch with the repeated singalong refrains of “just come on home!” on closer 'Christmas TV'; festive cheer simply emanating from the bare-brick surroundings.
There are a couple of technical niggles throughout the show, but Taylor's plea to the sound desk for less echo and more reverb (“more Adele, less Future”), is perfectly demonstrative of the musical direction she's interested in. Slow Club are pulling themselves out of their twee-indie niche and aiming for the stars; on the strength of this performance, it'd be unwise to bet against them.