November 10th 2015
The Lexington is a small venue, a proper pub with a hipster sensibility. MONEY make big songs, expansive and grandiose. So tonight, it seems a fitting place for a warm up show ahead of the release of forthcoming album Suicide Songs and gigs next year at London’s Village Underground, a step back into the music business of gigging and performing, without a fanfare.
The room is pretty much empty for support Tony Volker, a few people sat around the edges of the room awkwardly as if at a school disco, but his finger picked melodies, electronic underscore and affable personality saw us eager ones happily entertained, if bewildered as to the wherabouts of everyone else.
They soon swarmed in for the main event; Manchester’s MONEY. Opening with new single You Look Like a Sad Painting on Both Sides of the Sky, and working through new songs and old, including the bass heavy Letter To Yesterday and a chunky version of So Long (God Is Dead) they are a captivating live act, matey banter and bright eyes juxtaposed with what can seem lofty and elaborate lyrics. Bleak and beautiful, their melancholy verses morph into the most epic of choruses, textured and explosive at the same time as being intimate, and despite the sombre nature of their songs, Billy Byron’s drum pulse over Charlie Cocksedge’s ambient keyboard and Scott Beamen’s intelligent bass makes it sound hopeful. They continue to be the sound of experience, rather than achievement, emotive and intense. It’s compelling, forceful, but still playful and warm. The last couple of years have apparently been hard, as Jamie Lee tells us at the start, but this time out being introspective and creative has been time well spent, if tonight’s show is anything to go by.
Suicide Songs is due for release on 29th January via Bella Union
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