Arrows Of Love, Good Books and Young Paul @ The Lexington 28.03.09 [LIVE]

White Light Club Night

March 29, 2009, 10:01 PM

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London is a strange city. There are so many things always going on, people constantly in a rush to get somewhere, tapping away on their blackberries and working on the train, boys wanting to be rock stars and girls wanting to be Kate Moss (or Daisy Lowe or Brody Dahl…) in light of this, there are many places to go on a Friday night but its difficult to avoid a night playing the same music with the same people in the same tedious manner. It is no wonder people are deciding to stay in or create raucous house parties to spice up the weekend!! However, after hearing about the night “White Light” a decision was made to try something new. Shoreditch has been done to death, Camden lost an inner light a couple of years ago and central London is no better. The Lexington (Pentonville Road) has recently re-opened post renovation and is filled with plush furniture, chandeliers and the longest list of bourbon whiskey you have seen in your life. It is obvious that it will soon be the new trendy hang-out for the cool kids, hot off the trail of a Hoxton nightmare.

Opening the night with a funky sound that would put quite a few new bands to shame was 6 month old London-based duo “Young Paul”. Being the first band on is a daunting prospect, however Carole and Omer didn’t shy away from the task and put on a show of pulsating synths and hypnotic vocals. Israel- born Omer looks (and sounds), like the missing link of Hot Chip, his massive afro swaying to the rhythm and newly polished shoes daintily moving across the stage. Carole has a stage presence that’s terrifically powerful and she dresses like all her clothes are purchased from a charity shop, but looks cool with it (maybe because she’s French). Their music is 80s fantasticalness meets modern day electro. If James Ford met Annie Lennox and Bon Jovi whilst at the same time was working with LCD Soundsystem and Sons & Daughters, you’d get the sound of Young Paul. As many new bands, there is still ground to find and bits of the live show are slow and dare I say it, dull. Thankfully there are highs; Young Paul are definitely worth listening out for.

The youthfully energetic Good Books were next to grace the stage with their charming sound. There was a substantial number of Good Books appreciators in the audience and they happily sang along and danced their knees into the ground. Despite a split with their record label last year, the music is better than ever (especially the cover of Yazoo’s ‘Only You’ on the myspace page- a personal favourite. A small wrench of disappointment was felt when they did not include the cover in their set). The tunes are bigger, sexier and funkier and stick to the zingy Talking Heads/ Depeche Mode meets Cure/ New Order soaked beeping-and-clicking music they are famed for creating. The new songs went down well, a sound much stronger than that of their debut album ‘Control’. The set started with a resonant version of ‘Passchendaele (KGB remix)’. It’s a rare and strange occurrence to see a band play a remix of one of their songs live, but it provided an atmosphere of euphoria with sounds uncannily alike to Sigur Rós’ ‘Hoppipolla’. ‘The Illness’, a track from their first album, was joined by an impromptu audience sing-along with at least half of the room joining in with “dancing, tripping up, falling down, bruised”, accompanied by the majority of them dancing (but not tripping up, or falling down). With the preview of new songs from their forthcoming album, there’s no questioning that Good Books LP number 2 is going to be a supersize treat!



Headliners were Arrows of Love are a grungy post-punk electro quintet of 3 girls and 2 boys. The set started with a feeling of The Fall meets Pavement. Something terribly early 90s and fantastically dark but without the narcissistic moodiness that some of the bands of said era carried with them. The audience, again, seemed enthralled by the live music and nodded their heads approvingly. Arrows of Love not only provided this deep sound, but mixed it up with some Howling Bells style vocals when the glamorous Luis took to the mic. Mixing a sound of Sonic Youth and Stereolab, there were highs and lows. The majority of the set was soaked in the bands painlessly noisy sounds; however there were a few dips when slower and less- established songs were played. Unlike the Good Books set, it was somewhat easier to get distracted during some of their songs. However, despite this problem, Arrows of Love proved themselves worthy of a musical audience. Give them a little more time and they’ll creep in to the radar when you least expect it.

After the fantastic live music, the night funked up and DJs played the latest and greatest music, hitting the roots of retro soul, motown, rockabilly and country, indie and rock and left the audience giddy from dancing like lunatics. White Light, deep in the Islington part of town, is one fabulous night to go to. There is little doubt in my mind that those with a good set of dancing shoes and a penchant for great music will enjoy their Friday night spent here.

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