So much has been written about Young Fathers that I didn't think I had anything else to add, but here we are, 3 days after the gig and still trying to figure out what the fuck happened.
I'm not going to pretend to be a huge fan - I've listened to everything they've released, but not obsessively, and the production sounds weird to me (more of that later). But like a lot of people, after seeing them at Glastonbury (no, via the TV, silly), I knew I had to see them live.
The scene was set with Nadine Shah supporting, who cranked out a muscular and groovy set of tunes, coming across like a Krautrock PJ Harvey - sexy, dark tunes you could dance to. And then, fashionably late to their own party, Young Fathers strolled on and cut loose. Pummelling dub bass. Chants - African chants, football terrace chants, playground chants. Slogans. Kinetic mayhem on stage, mayhem in my ears, mayhem in my brain. It's not an original thought to say that they don't sound like anything, because they sound like everything.
They are a gang, and not a totally friendly gang. There is a lot of extended eye contact, and it feels challenging. They have opened up the door to their world and allowed us to look in, and it's an ecstatic mess of writhing noise. We are tempted, but scared. They are outsiders, genuinely appearing not to give a fuck. Sonic attack is their best form of defence.
The songs obviously start and finish, but they sound as though they have been in motion for hours, settled into a groove, and we get to see a short excerpt of the peak of the composition. Daniel Barenboim in The Reith Lectures talked about a piece of classical music that was supposed to start "as though the music is already in motion, and you are climbing aboard a moving carousel", and this is what happens tonight. The songs, the noise, the emotion, all exist, constantly seething within the band, and a door is opened into them. The knot of microphone leads by the end of the gig is testament to the abandon and energy (have they never seen a cordless mic?)
In the same way, it feels as though we've been granted an audience with the band, rather than merely going to a gig. The whole thing is a celebration, a modern assembly or communion for a better world. It's a rave. There's a plea for a ceasefire in Palestine over a rupturing bass feedback loop. We are asked "are you still with us?" - mate, we have never been more with you, or anyone.
So going back to their recorded output, the weird (to my ears) production makes total sense - it's the sound of revolution that is already being fought and won, the feeling of being up all night and not being able to go to sleep. It's living iconoclasm, it's all your heroes being flayed alive and trampled on. I will never be the same again, and I will never see a gig like that again. The door has been opened.
