Review: Young Fathers, Trinity Centre

The Mercury Prize is a strange beast, dismissed by many as being as pointless as a Brit award, although social media is usually buzzing with indignation when someone’s favourite album is overlooked, yet it still throws up some surprising winners. Some well-known, some relatively obscure, and some who slowly sink into obscurity. One of the more surprising recent winners was Dead by Young Fathers. An album of conscious, experimental, urban electronic music which pushed the boundaries of being classifiable, straight out of er Edinburgh, which hadn’t troubled the charts one bit before the win.

Critically acclaimed at the time as have been their subsequent albums but can they songs and band work live? Or would the brain melting melding of genres fizzle out halfway through their set at a sold out Trinity Centre?

Young Fathers set up was minimal, couple of sets of drums and keyboards, three mics and that was it. Their light show was equally stark, basic colour washes in white, red and blue and no more. However the lack of everything but the kitchen sink to enhance their show worked well. The audience concentrated on the band, the music and the lyrics not ‘meaningful’ images and political messages screened behind them or lasers, smoke and mirrors. Sometimes just listening is enough.

It’s a rare gig where you can’t hear inane babble and chatter wherever you stand or see eighty percent of the audience filming it, this was one of those gigs.

Young Fathers opened with gut twisting and wrenching version of What a Time to Be Alive, and then straight into a renditions Wire and Queen Is Dead, all thunderous drums and bass and electronica skronking over the top as they declaimed oblique and menacing lyrics, seizing the crowd’s attention and not letting go for the ensuing hour or so.

The band’s charisma and stagecraft is so strong that, despite the often frenetic beats and rhythms, they were frequently standing stock still on stage waiting for their lines, pausing, sometimes posing and then they’d move, rap or sing and hit their marks every time. The trio, Alloysious Massaquoi, ‘G’ Hastings and Kayus Bankole shared the limelight equally, no one man dominated the proceedings or appeared to seek to dominate and be the star of the show. They let the music, the lyrics and at times the downright fury be pre-eminent and it worked superbly.

Their music was note perfect genuinely eclectic, mixing hip-hop, electronica, indie, dance, maybe even a bit of dubstep and delivered with the ferocity of a hardcore band like Bad Brains or hip-hop hardcore-ists H09909 when required or the tenderness of Benjamin Clementine.  And their ability to switch genres, sometimes in the middle of songs like Holy Ghost or Dare Me was astounding and outstanding and even if the crowd were familiar with the songs, you could see them being jolted into further attention with these regular yet unpredictable switches.

The performance seemed to take no time at all, but still included the big hitters like Get Up, Rain Or Shine, Toy, and Lord. When the set was reaching its conclusion rather than trotting docilely off stage and pretending to come back on ‘G’ gave the crowd the choice, go for the boring and obvious or should they just play the tune. They played the tune. A stunning version of Shame which was the best not encore Trinity has probably hosted.

On this showing Young Fathers are well on their way to being the daddies of politically aware, intense, eclectic music, whilst hip-hop and electronica are the genres most associated with them they are a band who can take on any style and make it work, make you dance and make you think.