Mirrors, York Basement
Mirrors
August 21, 2010
Some genres never truly go away, always bubbling under the surface ready to come out of the woodwork for their umpteenth revival. Whilst some artists contribute to the evolution of genres, others are content in recycling the same old formulas and are more than happy to add to the stagnation of certain forms in the knowledge that there will always be an appreciative market, unwilling to even tiptoe out of their musical comfort zones. They’re happy to hear the same styles, lyrics and visual trends rehashed. Younger music fans, some with a limited musical vocabulary, may have genuinely never heard well-worn sounds before, completely unaware or even unperturbed by jaw-dropping unoriginality.
Brighton’s electro four-piece Mirrors seem to fall somewhere between these two processes. Whilst they seem heavily indebted to the clean, tight and often dour semblances of the early 80′s, which in turn borrowed masssively from the straight-faced mechanics of Kraftwerk, there’s a meatiness to the rhythms which tends to pull the proposition over the right side of 2000 – making their signing to Skint seem quite appropriate. Taking to the stage in the more-than-intimate location of York’s Basement (the adjoining cinema’s internet café by day/comedy and gig venue by night – we count 37 people), vocalist James possesses the kind of downcast, airy croon typical of many vocalists associated with the early 80′s electro-pop movement. Opener ‘Fear Of Drowning’ sets the scene adequately – brooding, and weighty, but lacking the killer hook needed to stamp their arrival on stage. The lack of live drumming keeps the music tight, but perhaps compromises the energy and dynamics often needed to separate live performance from record.
Visually, it’s very clichéd – skinny ties, suits and slicked back hair do not help Mirrors’ quest to carve out an individual identity, lined up like Kraftwerk with the ends rotated 90 degrees. The welding of modern beats with synths reminiscent of early Gary Numan or Visage is an appealing enterprise, but with bands like Delphic and Hot Chip paying homage to the past without it becoming the defining aspect of their sound, it all seems a bit redundant, dealing in opportunisitic morbidity like an electrified White Lies. The reason La Roux’s shameless revivalism worked was not only because had she worked on a unique image for herself but she had one or two blinding singles – a great song being a great song regardless of it’s genre or vintage.
Mirrors, on the other hand, lack the heart-stopping moments required when tackling an old genre in such a typical fashion. Their textbook electro-pop doesn’t sound very far away from how it looks on paper. By the time we reach the big-chorused 2009 single ‘Into The Heart’, it starts to become annoyingly formulaic, the presence of synths making Mirrors seem no more forward-looking than the landfill guitar Luddites we all finally lost patience with two or three years ago, and the fact that they’re are about to embark on a tour with OMD as opposed to a contemporary band speaks volumes about the comfort zone they operate in.
Having said that, there’s the odd infectious moment – urgent set highlight ‘Ways To An End’ is a catchy, uptempo, number – kick-drum heavy and instantly memorable yet there’s something about the whole proposition that just doesn’t seem to click into place. It’s functional and proficient, but decidedly unloveable, and offers up very little that hasn’t been done to death more convincingly, a very long time ago.
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