As they lock in to Yatton’s remorseless groove, you get the sense that the audience could leave and Beak> wouldn’t break stride. Night one of the experimental rock band’s final tour with Geoff Barrow – their drummer and, thanks to the lingering power of his work with Portishead, their foot in the door when they began in 2007 – is a celebration of noise, focus and, most importantly, the things that can be achieved when musicians really get each other.
With Barrow stage left, bassist-vocalist Billy Fuller seated in the middle and multi-instrumentalist Will Young standing off to one side before a table of gadgets that look like they might once have sent a cosmonaut into orbit, the trio play spiky, difficult songs with the low-stakes freedom of three mates with a block booking at a rehearsal space.
The set is split in two, with almost all of Beak>’s recently released fourth album >>>> played front to back before a “greatest hits” segment devoid of any actual hits. “All you have to do is be polite for the first bit,” Barrow says, but the decision is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it success, allowing new songs such as the nuanced Hungry Are We to seep in without anything too cacophonous either side of them.
Backed by flashing neon strip lights, which hang from wire trellises in mid-80s Top of the Pops fashion, Secrets is a weightless synth-pop song, its hook all the more effective for its half-mumbled delivery. “That was the ghost of Phil Oakey,” Fuller quips, and he’s not wide of the mark.
The latter stages are a thunderous charge for the finish. Allé Sauvage is dialled up into a rumbling kosmische jam, while Wulfstan II is all fuzz and low-level threat, like the Stooges if they were into craft beer instead of heroin. Once the final note lands, the band get up and wander off. There isn’t anything like sentiment, certainly not a sweat-soaked bow, to send Barrow on his way. That would be a bit much given this was just some friends mucking about.
• Beak> play Kentish Town Forum, London, 1 Nov. Then touring.
