Groove Armada – Palace Theatre
By Tom Quinn • Jan 29th, 2010 • Section: Music, ReviewsGroove Armada
Palace Theatre
January 27, 2010
I look up at the flecks of gold slowly spiralling down and settling on the crowd below. The Palace is taking a battering from the musical barrage unleashed by Groove Armada during its stellar Big Day Out sideshow performance, and the crowd is loving every minute of it.
Groove Armada perform at the Palace Theatre
Groove Armada played to an ecstatic crowd of Wednesday night partiers at the iconic Palace club on January 27th as part of a run of Big Day Out sideshow gigs. This tour comes ahead of the March release of their new album Black Light, which promises to show yet another side to this already chameleon-esque band.
The crowd was warmed up in the hours before by the dirty bass line mixes and trance drive sounds of Simian Mobile Disco DJs, who set the scene for the night to come with a vibrating wall of sound which would have found itself at home in any time slot between midnight and dawn.
Nothing could prepare, however, for the entrance of Groove Armada. Sporting a fresh look and headed up by new lead singer SaintSaviour (Becky Jones), they drove the crowd through 90 minutes of unstoppable dancing to their huge selection of songs. They ramped up the energy on the old tracks and merged them into a seamless mix of classic and sparkling new, while their enormous lighting rig hailed down laser lines and disco light upon the seething crowd. From their teaser two-minute sample of their best songs at the start of the set, all the way through to the roof raising spectacular of ‘Superstylin’, Groove Armada played an incredible and literally dazzling set to the enthusiastic masses below.
The star of the show, SaintSaviour looks set to become a rock queen in her own right following this tour, with uncopyable dance moves, a triple-shouldered reflective outfit fit for a quarterback in drag and a powerful vocal range to boot. Her stage presence blew the crowd away as they gazed up in awe at each and every extravagant move and pose.
In balance to this, MC M.A.D., Groove Armada’s original live front man, kept the crowd bopping with his steady stream of grooving lyrics and his ultimate chill attitude on stage, as he and SaintSaviour passed the mic between each other to perform their numbers with implacable ease.
It appears that Groove Armada is determined to once again defy categorisation with many of the songs from the upcoming album, having a strong 80s electro pop feel to it. The two advance singles already released, ‘I Won’t Kneel’ and ‘Warsaw’, were received with rapturous applause, however I feel the yet-to-be-released ‘Paper Romance’ will soon be the real show stopper. The live version has a sassy mix of electro pop, driving bass and an infectious, instantly learnable chorus. Or maybe I was just won over by the luminous red banding that lit up SaintSaviour’s outfit during the song…
The absolute show stealer, though, was an oldie; as Andy Cato stood up on stage with his trombone and played the unmistakable opening tune to ‘Superstylin’, the crowd went absolutely frenetic. This extended live version went for double the time of the original as MC M.A.D. teased the crowd along into a six-chorus finale.
Amazing show. Absolutely no regrets from this tired reviewer who’s been punished all day for being out so late on a school night.
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