By now, Warpaint have been a band for almost twenty years. Originally forming on Valentines Day 2004, and releasing debut EP Exquisite Corpse three years later, the Los Angeles band initially bore similarities with other minimally-minded bands like The xx.
Making magic out of negative space going into the 2010s, entire, shadowy worlds seemed to emerge out of spare beginnings, Therea Wayman and Emily Kokal’s hushed, understated vocals mingling together to brooding effect. Though the group has gone through multiple evolutions since, stepping off to pursue individual creative threads seems to have kept them energised.
The powerhouse drummer Stella Mozgawa, the vital source of Warpaint’s fidgeting and uneasy pulse, is now an in-demand collaborator and producer, linking up with everyone from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, masked producer SBTRKT and Welsh art-rock artist Cate Le Bon, to fellow Aussie Courtney Barnett. Wayman and bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg have both released varied debut solo records (LoveLaws and Right on! respectively) while Kokal has been busy working with electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani. They made their first album in six years, 2022’s Radiate Like This, while scattered across the world during a pandemic.
Early in the group’s Southbank Centre show, where they were playing as part of Christine and the Queen’s Meltdown festival, that album’s opener Champion felt like a fitting representation of just how far the band has grown, drawing increasingly on more delicate textures, and pulling in hints of both jazz and soul to the record as a whole.
“We’re all the same sun,” they sang, “we’re all our own sun too”. The brutalist surroundings of the Royal Festival Hall suited them well, with an impressive and meticulously choreographed light show steadily shifting the mood. During opener Stars – the first track from their debut EP – an unforgiving strip of neon illuminated the room as Kokal urged her audience to dive in. “If one does it, all will follow!” she declared, commending an enthusiastic punter standing up from the very start.
Initially, the show felt oddly formal in its theatrical, entirely seated setting; a brief outbreak of irritating shushing even took place during Keep It Healthy. By debut album standout Undertow, however, even the tutter was thoroughly won over and upstanding as orange and blue lights collided in a blended palette of colour.
Lindberg sang lead vocals on an expansive cover of Fugazi’s I’m So Tired, which unearthed new facets to the punk piano ballad and transformed it into a full-fledged, all-band song. Morphing from New Song into the vaguely industrial dance-rock tune Disco/Very only built on this momentum.
Rather than ending with these two tracks and a cacophony of disco lights – arguably the easiest road to head down – Warpaint instead chose to finish with a blend of old and new, travelling from last year’s soul and jazz inflected Send Nudes into some of their oldest songs. Instead, Beetle and Elephant closed the show. It felt like a much less direct, but far more fitting end to a set that explored all of Warpaint’s subtle evolutions. Band break-ups and creative differences be damned; whatever this lot’s secret is, it’s working out a treat.
