Live Review: VV Brown – 17th October 2013, The Electrowerkz, London, UK

I don’t have much appeal for the generic pop which has become popular as of late – the kind of music which has no real feelings or emotion to it. Luckily, VV Brown is not an artist of this genre. VV Brown has the ability to take the non-specific genre of pop and put an interesting twist on it that gives it true musical appeal as well as chart appeal – which was easily displayed at the Elektrowerkz on the 17th of October.

VV had not one, but two, support artists – the first of whom were Mandelbrot Set, a distinctively progressive and experimental sounding band. The instrumental band played a powerful set of strangely enjoyable progressive tracks that appealed especially on a musical level with their clever riffs and rhythms that provided the main interest for the majority of their songs.

The second support band were Mayaeni, a five-piece rock band from Detroit. After entering the stage, they kept the audience enthralled with a mixture of pop-rock sounds that could be comparable to Kings of Leon and Colplay, and songs that were constantly able to be sung and clapped along with. This was absolutely taken advantage of by the singer, who played the audience even better than she played her guitar, getting them moving and singing along throughout the set.

It eventually got to the time when VV Brown was due to come on stage, but her band came on first – playing a dramatic synthesiser based opening before she entered the smokey stage, standing silent for some time as the audience cheered and surreal videos played on the back of the stage. Brown’s opening track was Looking for Love, which suited dramatic feeling that was already being given to the event. The third track, Igneous, only boosted the dramatic vibe of the gig with it’s haunting but inspiring vocals and peculiar groove that had the audience swaying slowly as if they were hypnotized.

After playing several tracks which were dramatic and cinematic VV announced that she was going to play a few songs from her first album, to much cheering from the audience. At this point he gig got significantly more funky for a while – with Brown’s song Bottles getting everyone in the venue dancing. After the funky interlude of Bottles we were treated to an alternative “sexy” version of Shark In The Water. Although the track felt more chilled than sexy to me, it was still nice, getting the whole audience swaying and singing along once again. The gig ended with The Apple, finishing the gig with the same dramatic tone that it had ended with – it’s titanic chorus having the whole audience chanting along with Brown in a way that gave me goosebumps.

All in all, the gig was fantastic, with an interesting range of artists playing – ending with a headliner who really deserved the title, showing perfect control on stage and a live sound and stage presence that many other artists could learn a few things from.

Set List:

1. Looking For Love
2. Nothing Really Matters
3. Igneous
4. I can Give You More
5. Knife
6. Faith
7. Ghosts
8. Samson
9. Substitute
10. Bottles
11. Shark In The Water (alternate version)
12. Warriors
13. Beginnings
14. The Apple

Nick Roberts

::: covering the latest live events in London (UK) for RenownedForSound.com