White Lies Live at the Academy

With one arm rigidly perched behind his back and another suspended motionless over the crowd, in a pose that’s accidentally reminiscent of a rally-happy der Fuhrer, front man Harry McVeigh appears proud but quietly charming. ‘Now be a good girl/and do what you're told,’ he spits on To Lose My Love… gem ‘E.S.T’, pounding his fist to his chest with growing ferocity as the minutes pass. Something about his slightly awkward stance reads handsome and complex, like a kind of grimacing Heathcliff. I make up my mind, very quickly, to do exactly as the man says.

Brought to the Academy tonight by Heineken Green Spheres, White Lies are as straight up as bands come. While critics correctly bunch them together with fellow mood-rockers Interpol and Editors, these Londoners pay closer attention to the great new wave pop outfits of the 1980s, who, much like White Lies, took themselves very seriously and used the words ‘fear’ and ‘die’ a lot.

The stern ‘Farewell To The Fairground’ kicks things off in stomping form and from here on out we’re sitting pretty on album tracks until epic closer ‘Death’, save one “old” tune thrown in for good measure - the especially melodramatic ‘You Still Love Him’.

One thing’s for sure; McVeigh’s voice is astonishing. In a range-pushing 50-minute set, the 20-year-old Brit sounds heartbreakingly pure and pitch perfect, to match Charles Cave’s perfectly ominous bass and Jack Brown’s perfectly thunderous drumming (along with McVeigh’s falsetto, the latter’s thrashing is surely the band’s USP). Heck, even the foursome’s matching black shirt and trousers are flawless. I find myself wishing for a bit of anarchy – a stray hair, even - to distract me from the blob of Heineken slipping down my leg.

But, I suppose, if this crowd had wanted chaos rather than tense, sophisticated pop, they would have plumbed for Adebisi Shank last night or Battles tomorrow. Chaos, I relent, is not White Lies’ forte. It’s the surging, dynamic Joy Division-esque rock - however unvaried - they’ve got down.