Thursday 4th June 2009 @ The Fleece, Bristol

You have to feel for art-rockers White Rose Movement. Had they burst onto the scene last year, they’d probably have wound up, well, everywhere. Like big-selling contemporaries Klaxons and White Lies, they’d have been carried triumphantly along the NME-sponsored eighties revival wave. Neon-clad teenage girls would have swooned at frontman Finn Vine’s tight trousers and dashing cheekbones and drooling execs would have lapped up the quintet’s ‘retro’ leanings and resulting profitability. Another star would have been born.

Alas, they didn’t. Accomplished debut LP Kick crept onto the shelves way back in April 2006 – when Arctic Monkeys and Snow Patrol ruled the musical world and the eighties were still, like, sooo over. Like all the greatest happenings, White Rose Movement were ahead of their time – and that is probably why they found themselves playing to four men and a dog at The Fleece in Bristol.

It was a criminally small crowd – especially when you compare it to the throngs the aforementioned Joy Division cover act, White Lies, somehow attract. Thankfully White Rose Movement are back with album number two on the way and, unperturbed by the sparse audience, they hurled themselves into proceedings with infectious gusto. Tracks like London’s Mine and Testcard Girl were greeted like long-lost friends and the sumptuous Girls In The Back sounded massive, the anthemic chorus sending the female-dominated crowd into a maniacal, cider-soaked dancing frenzy.

This is a band who have honed their signature post-punk sound – heavily influenced by Depeche Mode and Duran Duran – to perfection, and Vine’s Robert Smith-like vocals literally soared above Jasper Milton’s jagged guitar and Owen Dyke’s unrelentingly funky bass. Threatening to upstage the lot, however, was captivating keyboard maestro and occasional vocalist Poppy Corby-Tuech. Heartbreakingly beautiful and armed with a stage presence to rival the most hypnotic of frontmen, she alone is a star in the making.

After wowing the hungry punters with thunderous newbie Fever, the London quintet saved their best for last in the form of debut single – and the track Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke wishes he had written – Love Is A Number. Edgy and stylish, it’s glorious enough on record but live it was transformed into a hedonistic, adrenaline-fuelled explosion, all crashing drums and towering electronica. It was a joy to behold – as were White Rose Movement. Let’s hope that, when the second record does arrive, there are a few more doing the beholding. This lot deserve it.

www.whiterosemovement.co.uk

Ian McDonald