Can we talk business for a moment? When reviewers like me go to big arenas, we get the best seats in the house, with fantastic sightlines and excellent sound (a PR who used to work for U2 told me she would routinely reassign press into even better seats than the already splendid ones they had originally been given; you do anything you can to get an extra 1 per cent more enthusiasm into the review). When we go to standing venues, though, we are as prone to the vagaries of geography as anyone else.
And because we go to a lot of shows, we tend to arrive only five minutes before the turn we want to see goes on stage, which means we rarely find great positions. When Divorce played at Koko last week, I ended up at the very top of the old Victorian theatre, looking almost directly down on the stage, the sound muffled by the roof low above me. From the most distant spot in the gods, Divorce were absolutely breathtaking. So from down on the floor, they must have been something else.
They’re a four-piece, but let’s be brutal: only two of them matter. Drummer and second guitarist were tucked away on little platforms at the back of the stage, while singing bassist Tiger Cohen-Towell and singing guitarist Felix Mackenzie-Barrow occupied the front. The other two were exemplary players, but the front pair write the songs and sing the songs. It’s their band.
There was nothing wildly unconventional about them: often they took very familiar forms, but bent them out of shape just enough for them to sound fresh.
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