Faithless have garnered accolade after accolade for their live shows. As critics have clucked at the band’s intimate connection with their audience, so they have simultaneously coo-ed at their ability to take dance music to stadium-sized proportions.
Tonight’s show is thus eagerly anticipated. The last date of a week-long UK tour promoting their new greatest hits collection (“Faithless Forever”) is clearly going to be formidable, so the adoring masses are gathered in earnest – slightly bug-eyed, slightly sweaty affirmation of dance music’s continuing vitality.
Following an energetic but incongruous set from punk-funkers The Infadels, Rollo, Blissy and the rest take their places on a stage so large it reduces them to Lilliputian figurines, while most of us watch a bowdlerised version of the show via live feeds to two giant screens.
A few beats and some strums later, the skinny, sagacious apparition that is Maxi Jazz appears, provoking an inevitable Mexican wave of cheers. This excitement is surpassed a song or two later by the deafening reaction to “Insomnia”, the track that sold a million ring-tones and by far the band’s largest anthem.
So far, so PLUR. The band continue to run through their oeuvre, playing tracks from all four of their albums (“Reverence”, “Sunday 8pm”, “Outrospective”, and “No Roots”), switching from the hedonistic excess of “We Come I” and “God Is A DJ”, to socially aware rants like “Mass Destruction” and ballads like “Don’t Leave” with nary a hiccough.
But that’s the problem. A few songs in and it’s obvious that tonight’s show is not going to be long on surprises. The group’s reputation as a force to be reckoned with has, somewhere along the line, been polished into a sheen of starchy professionalism.
Though the audience enthuse throughout to familiar sounds being played loudly, visual entertainment is restricted to the occasional jumping fit from Maxi, some constant head pecking from Sister Bliss and a bow or two from Rollo: Crowd interaction comes in the shape of a few brief anti-war/-Blair comments.
Perhaps expectations are too high given previous praise, but by the time we reach the end of the performance, an impression of a band simply going through the motions can’t be avoided. Dance music might be far from dead, but lacklustre shows like this surely aren’t going to promote its longevity.
