Curses @ The Lexington, London (Live Review) ^Featured

 Curses

 @ The Lexington

 Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Curses are a funny thing, aren’t they? Sometimes they take the form of a bicycle with a dodgy back wheel. This unholy mode of transportation, or vile demon spawn in this case, having already broken two spokes on two separate occasions in a week, nearly claiming your life at a busy intersection, thirsts for blood. Which then relentlessly continues to demand, and get, a bloodied sacrifice to return to a somewhat functional mechanical asshole once more, type of curse. Or perhaps, and probably a tad more relevant to our review in this case, a curse can take the form of a string of empty venues whilst on tour. Not only that, but having to deal with a sparse audience being unruly, talkative and restless throughout a performance which is plagued by equipment failure and mild-to-medium electric shocks when your lips get too close to the microphone. Fortunately dear and valued readers, only one of these would be the case, and it wouldn’t be the latter. Enter, Curses.

Luca Venezia, born in the states but currently residing in Germany, by night known as Curses, thrives in the choppy and uncertain waters of a demanding international touring schedule; “I love the mystery of walking into a club and not knowing how the night will go.” Well, if one had to hazard a guess using support acts Corpus Milner and Nuovo Testamento as a metaphoric barometric gauge, it would’ve read smooth sailing all the way. At once, the set kicked off and we were all struck by the deep growling bass reverberating from the electro chop block propped on stage; all corporeal beings in its path were felled. Well-balanced accoustics enveloped the audience in a thick fog that’d put pea soup to shame. Curses, clad in psychobilly attire poured himself into the mic, while the music boxed our ears with a cutting brutality, in contrast with his vocal finesse that literally made the hair on his arms stand at attention. The same could be said for that of the hair on the back of our necks.

It is so satisfying trying to process, in hindsight, the atmospheric melodies of a dark-romantic, cinematic new wave set juxtapositioned against a DIY knotted nest of vipers in the form of aux cables, and strung instruments arranged around a chop-block-tableau centre stage. Luca, now part of the Italians Do It Better Family (no strangers to gooey eyed delights in the form of uber slick visual and audio) is out promoting Another Heaven, which was released last month. Curses, who also DJs and has been in-and-out of bands since his teens, has amassed a rich tapestry of influences and aliases in equal measures, but has quite literally found his voice when he dropped label expectations, embraced and learned from his many failures, and started making music for himself. This rich history entwined within his music and identity really helped build a relationship of trust between who we saw on stage and the audience below, tossing single roses into the crowd probably helped a little too.

‘Elegant Death’, with its throbbing and rolling bass really showcased not only Luca’s vocal range, but nodded to former label mates Chromatics. It was our set favourite, his compositional prowess really shone through. With the horizon in sight, Curses calls out to their manager, “What’s our call time tomorrow morning? I wanna know how hard I can go tonight.” “6am” was shot back but that didn’t take the wind out of his sails. Far from it, as he dove into the latter part of the set with equal measures of zeal, seemingly powered by an otherworldly source; flair. There is no doubt in our mind that the celebrations did indeed carry on into the small hours of the night. Sure, they would be met with regrets of biblical proportions, but we had none after a satisfying set. Catching up with the in-house sound tech at the end of the night they could not, nor could we, fathom how such talent is seemingly flying under the radar. I guess if you know you know, and now you know too.