Live: Highly Suspect

7th March at Sound Control

5/10

One thing that’s important to state from the offset about Highly Suspect is this: their music is loud. Very loud. This is of course something to be embraced by fans of the alt-rock trio, but does become somewhat tiresome as the night wears on, with some songs becoming indistinguishable from others due to the incessant, uncontrolled — ironically, given the venue — sound.

They open with an impressively energetic cover of Real Life’s ‘80s hit ‘Send Me An Angel’, before progressing into two popular songs from their debut album Mister Asylum; ‘Bath Salts’ and ‘Lost’; the latter encouraging the first of many clapalongs from the willing audience. It seems a little paradoxical that this punk rock/pop band encourages their audience to clap along to many of their songs, but it is their readiness to have fun, to really enjoy themselves and for their fans to do the same, that sees them refuse to stick purely to the angsty, over-serious constructs that their genre and lyrics imply.

This is, however, followed by the uncomfortably yelled ‘Viper Strike’, as a preference for noise again displaces vocals and music. In fairness, though, there are no pretensions here as lead vocalist Johnny Stevens announces that he intends to “fuck your eardrums” as “that’s the point of it”.

The second half of the show appears far more self-reflective and measured, with the slow but funky and romantic ‘Round and Round’, which includes a long instrumental, bringing a welcome respite from the previous onslaught.

‘Serotonia’, a single from their new album, invokes a large cheer, and, whilst one of their best and most thought-through songs, is briefly interrupted as Stevens jokes about the audience’s out of rhythm clapping — there is no sense of him wanting them to stop though, indeed he ends up leading them as the song crescendos.

The rendition of their biggest hit, ‘Lydia’, is pleasingly ominous and slower than the studio version, and his showmanship is evident as he teases the crowd by downing his drink rather than immediately singing the chorus. The anticipation rises, and the second half of the song is the strongest performance of the night.

The evening concludes with a hugely impressive (though a tad self-indulgent) drum solo from Ryan Meyer that seems straight out of Whiplash, though one wonders whether it might have served its purpose better at the start, rather than pre-encore.

When Highly Suspect play their songs straightforwardly and with the emotion reflected in their lyrics, they are very enjoyable. Disappointment arises, however, when in their obvious attempts not to be pigeonholed, they lose track of the quality of sound that their admittedly smart lyrics require.