Warpaint, Roundhouse, London, review: Harmonies go into otherworldly realms

Emily Kokal, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Stella Mozgawa and Theresa Wayman of LA art rockers Warpaint reunited in January this year to make their third album, ‘Heads Up’

Warpaint singer Theresa Wayman leads the band through an atmospheric set (Robin Laananen)

When LA art-rockers Warpaint trailed their new album Heads Up in recent interviews, describing it as influenced by their kinetic live shows, fans immediately recognised where they were coming from. The four-piece’s two full-length albums, full of brooding atmospherics, entrancing guitars and circulated rhythms, were so unfettered by the concept of immediacy you often wondered if the lack of actual songs was some sort of in-joke: dreamy signature tune “Undertow”, beautifully despatched early on, was about as singalong as it got.

Yet those same songs invariably came alive onstage with the space to breath, like the feeling of stepping out of a long car journey (in Warpaint’s case, a twilight, dusty road).

So from its title onwards, Heads Up attempts to shed the image of Warpaint spending too many late nights in hazy, smoke filled rooms listening to The Cure. It seems to suddenly preoccupy the band’s thoughts. “Did that sound like an old song?” asks singer/guitarist Theresa Wayman after the snyth-disco of the unashamedly radio friendly “New Song”. The answer is most definitely not.

But elsewhere, the shift is far more subtle. Heads Up highlight “So Good” is underpinned with an irresistible disco shimmy, but as the closing “Disco/Very” shows, they’ve been there before, albeit less obviously. “Whiteout” takes The xx-style beats as its starting point as it builds to a clattering crescendo, but again you’d be hard pushed to recognise the “Warpaint-go-pop” narrative.

But the truth is it matters little. Warpaint have always been a hypnotic pirouette of styles, more concerned with texture and groove than conventional structures. On that front, nothing has changed, and Warpaint therefore remain an utterly enthralling proposition. In drummer Stella Mozgawa and bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, they boast an extraordinary rhythm section the equal of any modern day contemporary, able to take Wayman and fellow singer/guitarist Emily Kokal’s harmonies into otherworldly realms.

The hurried “Heads Up” is propelled forward by the pair as the Lindberg sways next to Mozgawa’s drum kit, while another new track “The Stall”, with its low bass and shuffling beat, hosts one of the night’s most memorable melodies. For “CC”, the ominous bass and rattling drums cast an eerie shadow: the sort that Warpaint still excel at.