Kwabs, Koko, gig review: He already has a signature dance move the 'Kwabble'
A venue packed with hipsters watched as this one to watch perfected his idiosyncratic dance moves
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Your support makes all the difference.Kwabs is yet to release an album, yet Koko is packed. His pout-inducing name is on a lot of lips. Over the crowds hangs a sense of expectation.
Opening with "Pray for love", he shows that the hype is warranted. This is arguably his strongest song from the two EPs he has released so far and a brilliant showcase for his voice. It’s big, it booms and it has a vulnerability that makes the skin tingle.
He settles in quickly – you can tell as he whips out a particularly idiosyncratic hip movement which the kids are apparently calling ‘the kwabble’.
But back to that voice. On the very first chords of the formidable "Perfect Ruin", the audience instinctively falls silent and remains that way until its last strains extinguish. And then they erupt. You can’t help felling this could be his "Someone Like You".
The only dud note of the night is hit by the over-produced "Into You", which sound a little as if it’s been borrowed from someone else’s repertoire. But, once his sound is set – surely to be built around tracks that foreground his voice – there should be no stopping Kwabs.
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