Photo: Press
King Krule stepped furtively onto the stage at Oval Space in East London a little after 10pm. Creeping into view before the spotlight could pick him out, the recently turned 19-year-old offered a coy introduction before tearing into album track ‘Has This Hit?’ At first aggressive and bitter, the song shifts, its protean quality foreshadowing a diverse, spontaneous set.
Dressed in his chief stage uniform of an oversized suit (though you wonder what suit could possibly fit his elfin frame), Krule did not go in for badinage or banter, even allowing his drummer to offer the night’s parting message of gratitude. Rather, King Krule’s energy is reserved for his lyrics, which, given his strained sincerity, clearly require a lot of him.
Though often hostile in his delivery, he’s able to simultaneously strike a romantic figure. He took time to introduce songs in the spirit of a Beat, briefly addressing the audience to ask if they’d mind a spot of spoken-word poetry. This process preceded ‘A Lizard State’, for example, an up-tempo, brass-backed tune that had the crowd’s most sullen hipsters moving. These moments of heightened enthusiasm were to occur only sporadically during the set, though, as he is short of songs with the live immediacy of ‘A Lizard State’, having only released one studio album to date.
When they did arrive, however, they sounded pretty glorious. Album-opener ‘Easy Easy’ was played as an encore with great energy, and ‘Rock Bottom’ should be considered the night’s pinnacle. But for most of the evening the teenager was nailing slower numbers like ‘Baby Blue’, and experimenting with the length and tempo of his catalogue, proving a great chemistry exists among his band members.
Needless to say, as King Krule’s oeuvre expands with time, it will become less and less forgivable to ignore him.
