It’s been a good 18 months since this Canadian goth-rave combo last played in Glasgow, headlining the NME awards show at the O2 Academy in early 2011. So it’s now late 2012 and with a third long player under their belts, so to speak, here they are to deafen us once again.
It’s a very young crowd, Betty missed at least one if not maybe two support acts but everyone (sold out) was here for CC – there was a lengthy wait from about 8.30 or so, the usual 9pm or even earlier stage time at the ABC drifting to around 9.15 before they appeared.
With the stage dark but bathed in uplights, the chaos commenced. The twisted and demented synth chords struck up, Alice Glass began to wail distortedly, and we were under way. There is no compromise with this lot – knob-twiddler and producer Ethan Kath, unhinged vocalist Glass and live drummer Chris Chartrand creating a huge and overwhelming wall of sheet sound, tonight mixing older tracks from the first couple of albums with some from the current one. It’s hard to say just what it is but it’s something quite unique, if you can imagine The Time Frequency (?) fronted by Siouxsie Sioux; yes that weird.
The audience go completely bonkers throughout, even on a Monday night, and four times (at various points in the set) Glass jumps into the audience and not just crowd-surfs but crowd-strides, quite ambitous given she’s wearing a crop-top and a short skirt, yelling out the vocals while hoisted by a sea of hands (and yes, slapping off those hands who want to cop a feel as well; gentlemen restrain yourselves).
The middle section, including ‘Crimewave’, ‘Alice Practice’ and ‘Untrust Us’ was majestic and showed the breadth of atmosphere they can elicit, from jerky wigouts to haunting vocodered pop songs, the missing link between Fever Ray and The Prodigy, if you will.
The stage backdrop is an ominous image of middle eastern war, the titles (especially of the new songs – ‘Baptism’, ‘Wrath of God’ etc) are tortured, and the lyrics, from what we can gather in between the shrieking, are portentous and dark. But the real contradiction here is that most people just want to jump up and down with abandon, the energy levels being high at all times, and not get too heavy, although the music and lyrics definitely ask a few questions in between the OTT delivery.
After a brief break they were back for a couple of new ones, then a closing ‘Yes/No’ shaking the rafters once again, the show closing around 1030 after around 1 hr 15 mins. This is music of extremes and a bit hard to take on an empty stomach, but CC are true originals (there is some innovation and movement for the third album, less use of digital sound for a start) – where they go next is anyone’s guess.