Gig review: Hurts, The Garage, Glasgow

WITH their second album, Exile, having recently followed 2010’s first into the upper reaches of charts across Europe, Manchester synth-pop duo Hurts can rightfully be considered to have been playing a low-key show here.

Hurts

The Garage, Glasgow

***

That’s fine as far as it goes, and a chance for the audience to experience them in a unique and intimate setting. Yet with a sound and lighting set-up that seemed as if it had been designed for a much larger venue, most retinas and eardrums would surely have been left feeling punished.

Backed by four musicians in silhouette, singer Theo Hutchcraft and synth player Adam Anderson created a strange amalgam sound, a referential blend of Eighties tropes borrowed from New Wavers and New Romantics and clearly fed through a filter coloured by contemporary electro and techno.

Yet despite the arch dynamism of certain stylistic touches, from the black-clad (everyone onstage was black-clad) Hutchcraft’s leather gloves to a hint of a UK garage beat running through Sandman, there was something about this show which suggested its creators were enviously eyeing a guest appearance on X Factor or a production gig for Cheryl Cole.

Perhaps it was the boyband-quality lyrics exhorting us to “watch the rockets kiss the sky” (Unspoken) or pointing out that “we are all illuminated / lights are shining on our faces” (Illuminated, while the old crowd-holding-mobile-phones-aloft trick was pulled), but Hurts give the impression of being a whole lot of big-budget, magpie style and precious little substance beneath, as borne out by the bland acoustic interlude of Somebody to Die For.

There’s nothing wrong with that in pop if the music you’re making is devastatingly mould-breaking, but the sense here was that Hurts made a lot of noise to cover up the cracks in their sleek image.