Review: East India Youth, Exchange

East India Youth’s polarising mix of shimmering pop and glitchy electronics has gained William Doyle critical acclaim across his two studio albums. His first UK tour proper for the latest of those albums – Culture of Volume – rolled into Bristol at the Exchange, and as a live performer, Doyle settled on making the second of his two personas the base of his show.

Beginning with fidgety album opener ‘The Juddering’, the majesty of the studio versions of ‘Turn Away’ and ‘Beaming White’ was then injected with beats and frenetic bass guitar fretwork that fades into the background on Culture of Volume but became the focus of the live set.

Doyle’s handiwork and rushed button pushing around his new set up of keyboards, laptops and drum pads became so frantic that one bit of equipment fell off his stand and had to be propped up by audience members, and eventually Doyle’s manager. When the malfunction was fixed – even if Doyle did remark “I could carry on this bit forever so take your time” – the song lurched back into live with a new, frenzied atmosphere both on stage and in the crowd.

This energy pelted Doyle through ‘Looking For Someone’, Culture of Volume highlight ‘Don’t Look Backwards’, and ‘Heaven, How Long’, with the latter boasting a finale that built and built, ending in a cacophany of bass slides, white noise and wild audience appreciation that even Doyle’s dislike for silence between his songs couldn’t mask.

Early track ‘Hinterland’ has been a staple and a constant highlight of East India Youth sets since the beginning, yet when it is revisited with new material now in the forefront, the track proved even more wildly untamed, rising and falling over nearly ten minutes before careering to a halt, showing no complacency on Doyle’s part in the performance of his oldest songs, still tinkering and adapting them to give them a suitable home in a set built up largely from Culture of Volume, a very different body of work to where ‘Hinterland’ belongs. It’s done seamlessly.

A change in pace/a breather for a now heavily sweating throng came last, with time given to East India Youth’s quieter side, and to the unleashing of his overwhelming voice, in the form of epic closer ‘Carousel’. The flailing bodies from ‘Hinterland’ turned into deadly still ones, watching his every move as he performed away from his workstation with just a microphone at the side of the stage, becoming every bit the frontman he’s prevented from becoming when hidden behind so many electronics.

Ending on that note reminded everyone that William Doyle is indeed a singer, and can also do beauty and grandeur impressively well, but the intensity that characterised the rest of the set is where he thrives.