WU LYF – heavy pop at the Kazimier

WU LYF, or World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation to give them their full title are currently on the receiving end of much music press hype.

Assured debut album Go Tell Fire to the Mountain has largely borne this out however and despite hardly any press or information about the band online The Kazimier is comfortably busy.

With his vocals not entirely dissimilar to The Walkmens’ Hamilton Leighthauser, vocalist and organist Ellery Roberts thuds at his chest between anguished testifying.

Playing around what resembles an illuminated totem pole centre stage, majority of the quartet’s tracks build slowly before catching fire, the excellent sticksman nailing the beat firmly to the floor.

Not unlike unfairly neglected Nottingham post-rockers Six by Seven who also summoned the same squalling guitars and beautiful keyboard led-passages, the band play with the same gritted-teeth conviction.

With a sound as portentous as a band with titles like Spitting Up Concrete Like the Golden Sun God would suggest, their (almost) title track Lucifer Calling, reminiscent of Hollywood film-maker/muckraker Kenneth Anger fits in perfectly with the band’s redemptive themes.

Similarly, Heavy Pop neatly sums up the band’s approach in one song title, the band’s sound a digest of the best bits of the last decade.

The influence of Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, Walkmen et al are given a new spin by the band’s fierce determination however, wordless between songs, exploding into life once the count in has commenced.

Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact they hailed from Manchester, the band sound far nearer to music that has emerged from across the Atlantic in the last decade.

Dirt, revolving around a thudding Spector-esque drumbeat and howled backing vocals is possibly the set’s highpoint and the nearest they come to an all-out anthem.

Whilst the LYF may well prefer to operate under the radar presently, on tonight’s showing those circumstances may be set to change as the fervid reception they received at The Kazimier means surely bigger stages now beckon.

Pictures by Marie Hazlewood