168. Blackfield
Islington Assembly Halls
26 May 2017
Not any of my usual gig buddies for this one. I am here with a friend who knows nothing of this band, a Steven Wilson side project with Aviv Geffen (Israel’s answer to Morrissey) in a very rare live outing.
For the uninitiated, Blackfield make music that sits delicately between art-rock grandeur and some kind of crisis. Every song sounds like it should be playing over the closing credits of a film where the main character realises the futility of it all but looks quite stylish doing so.
They delivered a set that mixed new material with the old heartbreakers. “Family Man,” “How Was Your Ride?” “Once,” and the inevitable “Pain” all shimmered with clinical precision. Geffen’s delivery is melancholy, even theatrical, delivering fan favourites such as “Lately” with over-wrought desolation. Meanwhile, Wilson stood beside him with the faint smile of a man who’s been melancholic professionally for so long, this would have appeared upbeat to him.
Between songs, he chattered away in charmingly broken English, thanking London, lamenting world affairs, and, in one surreal moment, introducing a song with: “This is for people who feel too much. Which is all of you, because you’re British and you hide it.”
The music is smooth, precise, almost absurdly tight. It’s prog-rock, yes, but not the noodly, elongated solo kind. It has kinship with bands like Lunatic Soul, The Pineapple Thief, even some Crimson in there more than it does with the likes of Yes and Genesis.
My friend, bless him, was more there for the cocktails and a nice dinner. The music? A polite shrug. Fair enough. However, I realised something that night, something I already knew but hadn’t voiced: I’m an unrepentant sucker for melancholic, sad, pop-leaning art-rock, just look at my musical root-code: Sylvian, Numan, Kate Bush, Talk Talk. I was kind of hiding in plain sight.
I like the idea of punk and hardcore far more than I like the actual sound of it. After about fifteen minutes of that three-chord fury, I start wondering if anyone in the room has considered a key change or therapy. It leaves me exhausted and a bit bored.
I am also not completely sold on metal. I find quite a lot of it a bit silly; a carnival of strained faces, fretboard gymnastics, and gyrating masculinity. A sonic willy-measuring contest conducted by men who own too many skull rings. When it comes to mainstream happy pop, for me it is mostly pure vapidity, music for people who think “having a good time” is a personality.
No, what I want, what I need, is intelligence, texture, melancholy. Music that hurts a bit, but in an elegant way. Give me something bruised, something that sounds like it’s been up all-night thinking. That’s why Deafheaven floored me. They took black metal, a genre long owned by angry teenagers shouting about goblins, and turned it into something poetic, shimmering, almost beautiful. That’s the trick. Take the rage, mix in a ferocious intelligence and filter it through despair and, to me, it’s art.
Which brings us neatly back to Blackfield. Yes, they’re overwrought; Aviv Geffen telegraphs emotion like he’s auditioning for a Greek tragedy. But there’s something there. A glint of genuine feeling beneath it all. It’s music that actually tries, that bleeds a bit, even when it’s being pretentious. I’ll always show up for that.