Last night, I saw Rough Trade’s hot new signings, all-girl quartet Warpaint, perform in Crawdaddy on Harcourt Street. Warpaint, who hail from Los Angeles, released their EP ‘Exquisite Corpse’, mixed by John Fruisciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers, in early 2009. The EP was immediately popular, soaring to number one on Los Angeles’ Amoeba Records Local Artists Chart. Though Warpaint seem to be taking the world by storm at the moment, I was quite surprised to hear that they would be playing in Dublin, and even more surprised when I saw the number of people who turned up to see them.
Playing to many entranced audiences in the last year, Warpaint have opened for Yeasayer and Band of Horses, to name just two. Though they are supposedly one of the hottest hipster bands of the moment, the crowd at Warpaint was (thankfully) quite reserved, and seemed to genuinely be there just for the music rather than to appear ‘cool’, or whatever. There was a polite cheer when Warpaint took to the stage, and opened the performance with their self-titled track ‘Warpaint.’ From the word go, Warpaint occupied the crowd, showering us with their complicated guitar riffs and haunting vocals. The mood set was certainly quite trippy, and the drums helped to set the feeling which was perhaps reminiscent of post-rock. Warpaint have been repeatedly referred to as a psychedelic rock band, and this description, in my opinion, fits them perfectly. It was probably the strong beat of the drum which drew me in fully throughout the concert, as Warpaint drifted serenely through tracks such as “Stars” and “Elephants” which appeared on their EP, and Composure and Undertow which make their debut on Warpaint’s album which has it’s official release on October 25th (but was on sale at the gig.)
As a live entity, I thought Warpaint were great. They all seemed to be very amicable toward the crowd and each other, and they worked well together as a team, rather than each girl trying to do her own thing, which seems to be the problem with many of the bands around at the moment. I certainly left Warpaint feeling content and lulled into a dreamy haze by the four musicians from LA.
