White Lies - ICA, London - Tuesday 7th October 2008

My first trip to a gig at the ICA (although I had been there a couple of times before to look at photos and paintings), and the headline band were White Lies. They used to be called Fear Of Flying, before they completely changed name and direction. They played a big showcase at the Camden Crawl, then signed a huge record deal after the customary bidding war. Very few gigs, but plenty of hype and coverage since, this was their first "proper" tour. The London date sold out in June, and was a pretty small venue for this tour, given the size of the other venues in much smaller towns. You suspected that some people - either the band, their management, or their record company - were trying to starve the London public of White Lies, to build up the hype and anticipation. This was their first sold-out London gig, and so was accordingly stuffed with a mixture of industry people and die hard fans.

After a couple of support bands, White Lies took to the stage just after 10pm. Dressed almost all in black, they immediately piled into their set, the first number of which was a synth heavy tune - it reminded me of The Killers, or, dare I say it, The Bravery (but in a good way). To be fair, this first song wasn't really representative of their whole set, but it certainly did set the tone for a show containing a whole range of influences. The synthesisers sounded like The Killers, the similarities with bands like Interpol and Joy Division were obvious, and the singer even sounded like Jim Morrison at times.

Throughout the set, it was blindingly obvious how absolutely huge the band's sound is. They are very tight, very polished, and sound absolutely like the finished article when they play live. It was strange to listen to the massive sound they were making, where the bass made your stomach vibrate, and the riffs reminded me of Muse - in that they wouldn't be at all out of place in a stadium. But then, when the songs finished, you could hear individual people clapping and cheering, in a crowd of 300 or so. White Lies are much too big for venues like the ICA, and pretty soon, they will quite obviously be playing much bigger places.

So, the sound was huge, the live performance was incredible, and they will be graduating to very much bigger venues in the very near future - you can absolutely see how this band will headline festivals and stadia, and would probably go down an absolute storm in the US. A comparison with U2 isn't as completely ridiculous as it sounds. Despite all this, the one thing I wasn't completely sold on was (all of) the songs. A few were incredible, a few were pretty good, but a few were average. Of course, as a young band, there is plenty of time and scope to write more songs - and if they can continue to write more like their best, I think they will be a very significant band for years to come. Tonight's gig could well turn out to be an "I Was There" show.