Photo: Splash
Bipolar Sunshine - or Adio Marchant - and his band take to the dark, empty stage and instantly light it up with crisp white outfits and glow-in-the-dark trainers. Pair this styling with the dark and dingy underground venue and the gaudy neon ‘Bipolar Sunshine’ sign, and you’re part of a sterile futuristic scene that could have come straight out of A Clockwork Orange.
He kicks things off with ‘Future (Part 1)’ and has the audience rocking in time and chanting the words at him as he swirls across the stage. On record, his tracks have an air of delicacy about them. Tonight they become total powerhouses thanks to a thumping bass that shudders through your core.
This edge is a bit overbearing for the more heartfelt songs and completely drowns out the samples of The Notebook that run throughout ‘Fire’ – which sounds a bit lame and soppy but somehow it works beautifully. However, this force contrasts his soft, soulful voice and works really well in elevating the more dreamy elements of his music, particularly in songs like ‘Drowning Butterflies’ and ‘Trouble’.
He mixes up his styles and subject matters as he effortlessly moves between the psychedelic upbeat ‘Deckchairs On The Moon,’ to the more solemn ‘Where Did The Love Go’ and then to the anthemic ‘Love More Worry Less’ – he even throws in a bizarre menacing cover of ‘Mad World’ by Gary Jules.
Bipolar Sunshine has mastered a failsafe structural formula and has an ear for a strong melody. He keeps you on your toes by resisting categorisation to a single genre and seeing as every single song he performs is so strong, those 45 minutes just fly by. You’re left wanting more and counting down the days to the release of the debut album, due to be released later this year.
