EMA commanded the stage. She stood with her bleached blonde hair and tight leggings as the dream punk rock girl, the girl who could kick your ass but you still want to take home to mom and dad. EMA and her band made dreamy experimental noise pop. Pretty much they got loud and quiet, turning distortion on and off, jumping around through spaztastic lighting, making surprisingly shocking music.
EMA stands for Erika M. Anderson but this is more than a solo project. The rest of the band puts as much on stage as she does. Her violinist used incredible looping effects and would put it on its side and play the violin like a guitar. At points I was sure the drummer was going to break her cymbal she was hitting it so hard. But EMA is Erika Anderson. She was sexual, repeating in a melodic hum “I wish that every time he touched me it left a mark”. She was goofy with stage banter, asking for sexy and weird lights. She put it all on the stage, making her music represent her insides, with blasts of energy and noise mixed with entrancing melodies and hymns. Her music is a stimulation, the quiet jealous internal desire.


Wild Beasts are like Muse but on depressives. Hailing from Kendal England they use heavy guitars, moody electronics, and falsetto vocals to make rock music. They’re touring off their 2011 release Smother which has a much more minimalistic sound than some of their other records. Smother is a quiet album built around electronic ambience and the transmuted guitar echo. This explains their stage presence at The Neptune. They never really let loose with their songs. Instead of expanding a song or pushing it to a climax they crafted it, molding their songs to specific tones and feelings.

This was still a rock show, even if the band wasn’t trying to rock out. What is the opposite of moshing? The answer is Swaying. Guys sway-dance with girls. You can sway by yourself. You can sway in a large crowd of people. You want to move, you feel something, you can sense the music, it’s eating you slowly, but there is not burst, there is no command to dance, there is just the feeling. Wild Beasts had this down last night. They used the symmetry of their instruments to create an awe effect. They weren’t looking to build up into a grand explosion; they were showing us the inside of the heavy nothing.
I personally would have liked to have seen their songs reach a new plateau. It seemed like whenever they were close to a climax the song would end. I was never caught off guard or brought to a new level. It might be because the material on Smother is better on the album.