Polica - Troxy, London - February 12 2014 (Live Review)

Poliça, who played London’s Troxy as the last venue on the European leg of their Shulamith tour, are only in their third year together.

They were founded in 2011 out of the 25-piece rock collective Gayngs as a place for Channy Leaneagh to express, in layered effects and metaphor, the abandonment of self to a thing called love. “So are we made just to fight all our lives?” are the first words she sings.

The stage of the Troxy is dark and backlit, casting spindly shadows of Leaneagh, tiny, dressed all in black, just her left arm darting and dancing across the art deco walls.

Her vocals are made wraith-like by auto-tuned reverb and echo. She is flanked by Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson, who mesh their live drumming with remarkable skill, and Chris Bierden, providing live bass and falsetto harmonies. But Leaneagh’s most significant collaborator, the essential creator of the Poliça sound, can only just be seen.

On a soundboard hidden to the right of the stage is producer Ryan Olson, founder of the Totally Gross National Product label and the composer behind the rich digitalized synth melodies, licks and loops that are piped onto the Troxy’s stage.

Much of this gig is spent playing the songs from ‘Shulamith’, their cogent and grave second album named after the late radical feminist Shulamith Firestone, whom Leaneagh calles her “mentor and muse from the grave.”

Leaneagh is a real-deal frontwoman. She’s strange and magnetic, totally involved in the music she is creating. Yet the power of her lyrics are often warped out of shape. When she sings lines as poignant as, “Call out to all your fantasies in the fallen/ All our fantasies drift by so slowly” on Warrior Lord, the meaning of the song is lost in the acoustics.

Poliça have a very calibrated tone that must sound deep and beautiful in the studio, but suffers in the airy din of a stage. Moments here are seductive and moving, the soul-baring feeling of Vegas or Tiff, or compelling by dint of the technique on display, like the solo-inspired outro on Lay Your Cards Out or the call and response percussion on Matty, but for long stretches the gig feels indistinct, too discreet, too safe and canned. It’s absorbing, but not exactly exciting, like watching a replay of a football match after missing the live event.

To close the set, Leaneagh covers You Don't Own Me, a feminist ballad from 1963 by Lesley Gore. “I’m just not one of your many toys,” she sings. “Don’t tell me what to do, don’t tell me what to say. Don’t put me on display.” It’s remarkable how different her voice sounds singing something so much more conventional. It feels live, fresh even a little raw, and Poliça are the better for it. Next time, get Olson on stage, exposed and capable of mistakes.

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