Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, gig review: 'Too cosily commercial'
Brixton Academy, London
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Your support makes all the difference.There's something gnarly in the underbelly of Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes, muffled as it is under a cosy layer of commerciality.
For all that this hugely popular, raggle-taggle crew of rootsy, souly ragamuffins are beloved of both music fans in need of cuddly uplift and advertisers in need of flogging compact, charcterful cars or freewheeling mobile phone contracts, there's a kernel here of something stranger and more underground than say, Mumford And Sons.
Edward Sharpe himself, aka Alex Ebert, is a magnetic presence, wavy locks tied in a raffish topknot over a libertine's frock coat, and although much of their catalogue is both twinkly and twee, the rough-edged squall of trumpet and moody rattlesnake percussion of ‘Black Water’, and the hoedown-punky shoutalong of ‘Janglin’ have more bite.
The artist most brought to mind, though, by the band’s hippyish demeanour (there’s no setlist - setlists are for squares) and their unnerving positivity and folky sweetness is Devendra Banhart - they're alt.folk writ large and commercial, and this gig pulls off the queer trick of seeming both much more intimate and far vaster than this 2,000-capacity venue – it’s only an ill-advised cover of Nina Simone's 'Ain't Got No' brings back the air of ad break.
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