Halfnoise - Camden Assembly, London 19/01/2017 (Live Review)
US outfit Halfnoise celebrated the beginning of 2017 with a series of debut shows across the UK and we caught Zac Farro and his band on the concluding date of the tour at London's Camden Assembly.
Despite opening band Gillbanks running slightly late thanks to the joys of North London traffic, the venue was packed so tightly you could barely move as a gradual trickle of fans turned into a full blown flood long before the now inaccurate start time. If there had have been a barrier, it would have been bursting at the seams.
The London natives couldn’t have been a better choice of support act. If you can call them that - with a line up of just two bands, they were more like a co-headliner. With only their 2015 debut EP, 'Lend Me Your Skin', behind them, their energetic indie stoner rock was the perfect sound to hype up the crowd before Halfnoise took to the stage.
Farro, armed with a tambourine in hand and his close friends as his backing band, took to the stage not long after 9pm. Having gone to the gig without having had any prior knowledge of either band, I was delighted to discover that Zac Farro is in fact a multi-instrumentalist. Long gone are the days where he was ‘that drummer guy from Paramore’, he has established himself as a versatile independent artist. If you weren’t in the know, you wouldn’t have ever though that this was a man who first caught our attention as a member of pop-punk royalty, especially when his wardrobe now resembles that of Theodore Twombly - Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) . His shy yet charming demeanour remains both on and off stage, making it feel like you were not watching an internationally acclaimed musician, but a close friend embarking on their first national tour.
Overall, both bands had their audience captivated and, unsurprisingly, demanding an encore after what felt like far too short a show.
Words and Photos of Jess McPhee
