Missed Bridezilla, who played first, but caught second support act, Newcastle band Firekites. They were fine - very young, and intensely quiet in performance, with moody atmospheric songs, largely instrumental. Their stagecraft needs work; the lead singer mumbled into the microphone between songs and I'll be damned if I have any idea what he said.
Stars came on a little late, but threw themselves into the performance from the start. Torq started grabbing bunches of petals from the flowers strewn across their amps and tied to their mike stands, and threw them into the air like white confetti as a mood setter, and they were as idiosyncratic and sweet from there on.
I think they had some minor sound problems, and sometimes the instruments (particularly the keyboard) overwhelmed Amy and Torq's voices, but overall they sounded good together. Especially when Amy and Torq harmonised and sang to each other; I will never tire of hearing how their voices work together. Alone, Amy has a lovely, light tone, while Torq is a little rougher and less polished, but somehow their voices just mesh perfectly.
I really do think their partnership is the backbone of the band; even their banter complements each other. When Torquill started rambling about losing his glasses, and not being able to see into the crowd without them, Amy cut in, saying "I have perfect vision", telling Torq that she couldn't share his gripe. At which Torq said, rather put out (in a joking way!), "Perfect pitch. Perfect vision. Amy Millan, she's just too perfect," or something like that, and made a face. Then he gave Amy the finger and she just giggled along with the rest of us. But he obviously adored her, and spent most of the night either singing to her, or leaning into her space to sing with her.
The crowd was fairly subdued to start with; even during well-known and upbeat tracks like Ageless Beauty there were swathes of people in front of us standing stock-still. This could be explained in part by the fact that a good part of their usual fanbase, the indie hipster crowd, was probably across town at the sold out Fleet Foxes gig instead; something Torq himself acknowledged when thanking the crowd for being here instead of there, or at least for buying a ticket to Stars once FF sold out.
Highlights included the joy on their faces as they let the crowd sing their best-known song, Your Ex-Lover is Dead, to them; the very cute sad robot impression Torq did on Amy's command: "That was your sad impression, where was the robot?" "It's inside."; and the chaos of the penultimate song, Calendar Girl, as Torquill crawled onto the middle of the crowd on the floor, with fans surrounding on their knees, as he yelled the song's refrain, "I'm alive!" over and over again, joyously and manically, to the end. When he finally returned to the stage, his face was so red from the exertion, but he was grinning from ear to ear. The energy they put into the show, and that they drew from the crowd, was amazing, and well worth seeing.
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