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Florence + the Machine, Friendly Fires, White Lies at Liverpool Guild Of Students Review

NME Awards Tour @ Liverpool University
What does an emperor penguin have in common with an indie guitar band? Both are heading for extinction. According to the chat this week, music listeners are defecting to pop and electro, driven away by dull-as-ditchwater "landfill indie". Even the annual NME awards tour, usually a sort of World Wildlife Fund for everything indie and guitar, has fallen prey: there is not a single conventional guitar band on the bill this year. Florence and the Machine don't have a guitar at all; instead they offer a harp, some noisy percussion and a singer (Florence Welch) who looks like Alice in Wonderland let loose in the costume department. A hybrid of Kates Bush and Nash, she is big on golden dresses, robotic hand gestures and suggestive lyrics. She was the winner of this year's Critics' Choice award at the Brits, although her path to stardom may be hindered by songs that have no tunes and a voice that could belong to an opera singer sitting on a hotplate. White Lies are already stars, their debut album having hit No 1 this week. But they are not happy men. The black-clad trio are the sound of 1980 (Joy Division) meets 2006 (Editors); their booming basslines and glacial synths drive songs that celebrate the joys of dying. It's all delivered with enough enormous choruses to make mortality sound fabulous, especially when frontman Harry McVeigh reveals a subtle sense of humour. "This is our last song and it's called Death," he announces, wonderfully. Friendly Fires use guitars, but in the manner of Chic, Prince and George Clinton, and they are taking on the noble mission of bringing the brass section back to pop. Their cowbell-bashing party grooves have earned them the sort of adulation that can transform a band's career. Glasvegas, meanwhile, are boys with guitars and shades, but they're hardly typical, what with their lyrics about social workers and tunes that sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain produced by Phil Spector. Though they were the sensations of 2008 rather than 2009, their torrents of emotion and windtunnel effects already sound timeless. A rendition of Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, with Ian McCulloch looking on, is a special moment, underlining how independently styled music can survive anything if it's brilliant. Someone should give the emperor penguin a guitar. Dave Simpson

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