Bubblegum Warehouse Pop Parade: Confidence Man take Manchester by storm
The Australian duo touched down overseas.
Photo: @alicebackham
I’d seen Confidence Man a few times before, but it had always been at festivals. My encounters with the Australian dance act were always on unfamiliar ground — where, apart from a few alt-dance fanatics, they had been treated only with the vague nodding of affirmation that most festival acts tend to receive under the afternoon sun.
Even on those occasions, however, the group excelled in their tongue-in-cheek brand of Madonna-posturing and champagne-cork-popping. I knew that Confidence Man were one of the most exciting live acts around, though I couldn’t help leaving the festival fields thinking, “Imagine what they’d be like at their own gig…”.
At Manchester Academy, I finally got the chance to watch Confidence Man perform at their own show; on their own bill; on their own turf. For an hour and a half, the venue is home to the “bubble-gum warehouse pop” world of the group’s newest record (3AM LA LA LA): a fizzy venture through club utopias, warehouse acrobatics and early morning mist.
The group open their set with the smash-hit DJ Seinfeld collaboration Now U Do. There’s no messing around. They spin straight into their addictive and anti-indie, pop-outing without hesitation, like a disc jockey opening their set with that one record they’ve spent all day mixing, knowing it’s going to set dance floors alight as soon as the needle lands on the groove. Now U Do turns an evening show into a full-blown rave… within less than three and a half minutes.
Admittedly, I’ve already sang the merits of Confidence Man’s previous two records. 2018’s Confident Music For Confident People and 2022’s Tilt have had their respectful blaze of Chic-meets-Acid-House-glory. Tonight is all about the outfit’s third record — a sound somehow both more radio-friendly and more oppressive than anything the band has ventured into previously. Where, to my ears, the first two LPs were for Ibiza beaches, 3AM (LA LA LA) is for the less sunshine-soaked areas of hedonism. As front-woman Janet Planet reels off dance-pop bliss (I CAN’T LOSE YOU), badgers and pigeons invade the behind-stage visuals, wandering through hexagonal sheets and grids of industrial excess. This is a sound where parties go off the rails, where the clubs spill into the carparks, where creatures of the night pick at half-smoked cigarettes.
Latest album cuts get their chance to shine in a live setting — more vibrant, more outrageous and more visceral than they ever could be on vinyl. SICKO swaggers with synthesiser self-righteousness. Sugar Bones’ raspy vocal, although a world away in terms of vocal technique, calls back to the playful contradictions of Factory’s in-house W.B Yeats, Shaun Ryder. Like Happy Mondays’ God’s Cop, in which provincial law and righteous law are sardonically mixed up, Bones contradicts his criminality with a divine calling (“I’m talking to God / I’m breakin’ the law / Anything to make it better”).
REAL MOVE TOUCH, whilst arguably one of the weaker moments on the record, is delivered with cartoonish vigour — much owed to the aid of Sweetie Irie’s virtual talking-head. His face floats and spins like it’s in an Adam West Batman transition. For a few minutes, it feels like a Gorillaz concert. There’s certainly something more to explore in the way of features and on-screen hi-jinx for Confidence Man in the future (get Damon Albarn on the phone, perhaps).
The show is simply relentless in energy. Brisbane’s art-ravers have no reason to slow down: their escapism relies on quick fixes. After flying through fan-favourites Boyfriend (Repeat) and Holiday, they return for an encore: the title track of 3AM (LA LA LA). The vocals loop with a sense of catharsis turned sour, the synth-bass drawls behind. Never mind the previous triumphs, this is the world that Confidence Man are ushering in now. Like all the greatest pioneers in alternative music, the band are enamoured with whatever will get them higher… and with whatever will most likely jade any indie-snob customers still hoping for the occasional glimmer of past comforts.
Confidence Man’s live show is an escapist joyride. But at the same time, it’s a break-beat manifesto for what they want out of their musical output: progress, excess and the occasional badger.