The world’s premier hardcore punk-rock band come to town and the results are spectacular.
This is right up there with the greatest moments Alexandra Palace has ever seen as Turnstile, and a high-quality bill, bring more explosive energy than a New Year’s Eve London fireworks display.
High Vis
We last saw High Vis at Reading Festival whilst Hozier was crooning away on the Main Stage. They were good value then, but nowhere near as pumped as they are for this evening. Who can blame them, Alexandra Palace full of hardcore fans is their dream come true.
It takes until the second song for a proper mosh to get going, a couple of crowd surfers are off by the end of it. By the fourth track the birds are most definitely not flying alone. I stopped counting at 20, and there is still a whole other support act before Turnstile are out!
Merseyside born frontman Graham Sayle is on less preachy form than at Reading. He still takes a few moments to praise the NHS who he credits with saving his life when he hit rock bottom, after several friends took their own lives. He also adds. “Don’t let anyone tell you billionaires are not the problem. It isn’t the migrants.” It draws a big roar of approval from the crowd.
Sayle is a whirlwind on the stage, a constant motion of dance moves, high kicks and jumps. The band bring everything tonight, feeding off the frenzied crowd. A large mosh-pit know the words to every track they play. ‘Drop Me Out’ kicks off eight tracks culminating in ‘Trauma Bonds.’ They have an interesting mix of influences, the Madchester streak giving their brand of hardcore a very distinctive flavour.
The Garden
Whilst High Vis were getting a lot of local love, The Garden were more of an unknown quantity (except for the small group of teenage girls nearby to us who went admirably ballistic to every track). They won the crowd over, though the moshing was a bit more restrained. They are an eclectic mix of styles definitely putting the alternative into alternative-rock. American twins Wyatt and Fletcher Shears formed The Garden in 2011 aged 17.
Frontman Wyatt looks like a younger Jack White wearing a long leather coat. Drummer and backing track presser Fletcher is more like Jason Isaacs playing Lucian Malfoy, also in a long leather coat and large leather boots. The set is a schizophrenic mix of guitar and drums and moments where Fletcher comes out from behind the kit and they go techno heavy. During these tracks Fletcher leaps off of the drum stand and keeps forward rolling around the stage at pace. There is a good chunk of showmanship amidst the avant-garde stylings. Wyatt announces in mockney tones, “I feel a little dainty, how about a ballet?” Before launching into the anything but dainty “Ballet.”
It is an intriguing thirty minutes, some of the crowd are more invested than others. They most definitely are not boring though.
Turnstile
Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ is playing the track before Turnstile come out and it kind of makes sense. NEVER ENOUGH was full of eighties-tinged touches. Some dismiss that phase as Bowie’s overly commercial and least interesting zenith, however a huge chunk of the crowd are singing along giddily to it, despite most of them not being born when the track was released. As everything goes dark there are wild whoops and cheers. The initial keyboard note of ‘NEVER ENOUGH’ starts and there is a roar. Then it is held and held… absolute teasing of the highest order before the band appear and start playing. As the drums and riffing come in Alexandra Palace EXPLODES and doesn’t stop for the next eighty minutes. Following it with ‘T.L.C. (TURNSTILE LOVE CONNECTION)’ ramps it up a gear straight away. There are gigs where security at Alexandra Palace get paid for not doing a lot. This was not one of them. Crowd surfer after crowd surfer is rolling in to their position. A couple of more brazen fans make a break for the stage (heartily encouraged back in the early days of Turnstile) but are dragged back and away before they give up.
The band are high-energy intensity personified and there are lots of clever touches to build and maintain the energy. Clearly the crowd cannot be as interactive as in the way Turnstile did things in their early days, but they have really thought about their set. Cameras are frequently trained on the audience and the mosh-pit and broadcast on the big screen behind the stage. Watching the frenetic energy of the pit, watching thousands jumping in time generates a kind of ouroboros loop where the band and the crowd continuously feed off of each other. There is even a mosh cam. I don’t know who was holding the camera in the middle of that maelstrom, but they have my ultimate respect and probably weren’t getting paid enough for it.
On top of these theatrics singer Brendan Yates, guitarist Pat McCrory and bassist Franz Lyons are constantly towards the front of the stage geeing up the troops. Meg Mills finally earned a proper spot in the band this year after two years as a touring musician. The wonderfully named Daniel Fang on drums is the beating heart of the band, constantly firing out aggressive patterns, nobody is working harder than he does on stage.
Whilst GLOW ON and NEVER ENOUGH carry most of the tunes tonight they dip into their first two albums for a couple of tracks each and also offer up three in a row from their 2013 EP Step To Rhythm in ‘7,’ ‘Keep It Moving’ and ‘Pushing Me Away.’
An enormous glitter ball descends for ‘SEEIN STARS’ and it is a beautiful moment. ‘HOLIDAY’ follows. The band briefly disappear, whilst the calypso ending of ‘LOOK OUT FOR ME’ plays out on a backing track, for a quick recharge.
Brendan Yates is not much of a talker beyond instructions like “JUMP, JUMP, JUMP.” or “You guys at the back, we need you up here now!” He takes a brief moment to discuss how good London has always been to them and how much bigger the venues and the love has got each time. There is an insane sense of camaraderie at this gig, despite the wildness of the pit there is total respect, people are looking out for each other, helping out those who lose their footing.
The final run in consists of an intense ‘MYSTERY’ and ‘BLACKOUT.’ There is only one word being whispered in the crowd at this point and it is of course ‘BIRDS.’ Right on cue gentle twittering starts up on the backing track. When they let rip, it feels like at least 6,000 of the 10,000 present are jumping in unison. Seek out the videos on social media, it was nuts! If Turnstile ever make it to festival headliners at Glastonbury or Coachella it might be enough to knock the planet Earth out of orbit. Right now, there is no ceiling on what they can achieve. Whilst their hardcore edges should cap their fan base the way they are starting to write purer rock tracks on more recent work suggests they can continue to burrow further into the mainstream. NEVER ENOUGH and this tour are phenomenal, but they still just feel like stepping stones on the next part of their journey.
As the lights come up you look around and there is just sheer elation on the faces all around. There are gigs and there are GIGS!!! This was an EPIC GIG!!!!!.
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