I guess it’s currently the elephant in every room up and down the country. But I would have thought an indie gig on a Sunday night is one of the less likely places for the EU referendum to rear its head. But it is here as well. First, more prominently in support act Porridge Radio, their guitarist donning a European flag as a cape and their lead singer blurting out “Stay in Europe!” at one point between songs. Almost as if it’s an obligation she suddenly remembered needed to be met. “It’s pretty scary” Mat Cothran of Elvis Depressedly confesses later to the crowd. But we shouldn’t worry. “I’ll protect you. Nobodies getting through me.”

Lo-fi indie rockers Elvis Depressedly are here tonight as part of their first ever UK tour, coinciding with the release of a new EP, which most of tonight’s setlist is drawn from, as well as last year’s New Alhambra. A bassist who looks like an extra from a Wes Anderson film joins frontman Cothran. Donning a sweatband across his forehead and a pair of flip up sunglasses, which he constantly and inexplicably kept flipping up and down. Drummer Delaney Mills plays simple rhythms often with just one hand, while the other fiddles with synthesisers and pedals.

Despite his efforts to the contrary, Cothran’s vocals are clearer than on recording. Not that on record it’s particularly hard to decipher what he’s saying if you pay attention. But the way they are treated pushes them away from the centre of the music, almost as if they are deflecting attention away from themselves. Live, he’s forced to project his voice where on a bedroom recording a mumble would suffice and with such a bare-bones live setup, there’s nowhere for his voice to hide. Once you become acclimatised to the relentless glumness, the humour of Cothran’s lyrics really begins to shine through. “If there’s a cold place in Hell / I hope you got it” he assures us on ‘Wild Honey’. Probably the least convincing piece of well-wishing ever conceived. On ‘Rock’n’Roll’ he deadpans the excuse that “Jesus died for us on the cross / so I could quit my job”. His stage presence is an extension of this. The line between sarcasm and sincerity totally blurred.

“Would you ease up on me”, he pleads on ‘Ease’. This is music that demands nothing of you and expects the same low expectations in return. There’s something liberating about the looseness of the contract between artist and audience. It’s inviting because it wants so little from you. “If you’re bored just wait here with me” he offers with affected insouciance on ‘Thinning Out’. ‘Stick around’ the music is saying. ‘But if you don’t feel like it, that’s cool too’. This communal sense might speak to why something like the referendum could be construed as a threat at an Elvis Depressedly gig. The tongue-in-cheek levels of melancholy start off oppressive but eventually become participatory, both in feeling it and laughing at it.

“I like meeting people.” Cothran explains after inviting the crowd to come and chat to him afterwards. “Maybe they like meeting me too, I don’t know.”
Louis Ormesher
Photos: Tom Barlow Brown

Facebook: facebook.com/elvisdepressedly
Twitter: twitter.com/comacinema