Music / Reviews
Review: Public Service Broadcasting, Academy
Public Service Broadcasting steadily grew to peoples’ attention with their debut album ‘Inform – Educate – Entertain’ in 2014. The band made up of multi-instrumentalist J. Willgoose, Esq. and drummer Wrigglesworth have played a lot of the city’s smaller venues and returned to the Academy for their largest Bristol show to date.
The night’s support came from Chichester folk duo Smoke Fairies. At first they had seemed like an odd choice of support, as their folky minimalism is an odd match for Public Service Broadcasting’s retro-futurism, but their inclusion made sense once it was announced they had done vocals for PSB. Their set had more of a space age feel than usual, possibly due to the girls’ matching metallic silver dresses, but more likely due to the backing band giving the music more of an 1960s psychedelic edge.
Public Service Broadcasting took to the stage with a version of ‘Sputnik’, revealing a smaller version of said spaceship, which then provided much of the night’s light-show. Despite touring their latest album, fans of the band’s debut were satisfied by an almost 50/50 split in the setlist between old and new material. Early favourites such as ‘Signal 30’ and ‘Theme From PSB’ were amongst the earlier moments of the set.
With it being a concept album ‘The Race For Space’ has less of a focus on the dancefloor than the debut, so the lack of the album’s more ambient moments meant the audience were never bored. In fact all of the new songs sounded better live.
Smoke Fairies inevitable re-appearance for vocals on the breathy ‘Valentina’ gave a welcome change from the usual use of recorded samples. Another surprise was an appearance from a three piece brass section for the seventies style funk of ‘Gagarin’ which was the evening’s highlight which even managed to get the more sedate elements of the crowd dancing.
For a seemingly nerdy band without a singer, Public Service Broadcasting managed to keep a sold out academy venue interested for 90 minutes, and were able to get quite a few dancing. PSB are a unique project and an unexpectedly great live act.
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