White Lies @ Kasbah Coventry

White Lies lead singer Harry McVeigh is fairly small in the flesh – even smaller than Foals frontman ‘Yannis Philippakis’, apart from that this warm up gig for the T- in the Park is large in every other way.

white lies warm up gig

Opening with huge single ‘Farewell to the fairground’, was a good decision and the crowd at a packed Kasbah were instantly in their pocket. After playing new single ‘Holy Ghost’ and an already modern classic ‘To lose my life’, the band could have left for Scotland there and then, and the happy crowd would have nodded and parted understandably.

It’s not until you see White Lies live that you really realise how many huge sounding songs they have, the brilliant closing track on their first album ‘The Price of Love’ sounds far broodier yet strangely uplifting live than it ever did on record. The sound is clean and loud, a combination of a great PA and a band growing with confidence at a daily rate.

They must be very fond of ‘A Place to Hide’, as they belt it out like it was their greatest hit sending the room into rapture once more. The show isn’t perfect though and there is the occasional flaw. There are some odd un-canny silences between songs and they play a few of their weaker songs like ‘Streetlights’ off second album ‘Ritual’, causing a few people do head to the bar. Luckily there is always another mammoth tune round the corner to drag them back again.

When Harry says ‘Here is a song everybody will probably know, it’s called ‘Death’’.
He wasn’t wrong.

For an encore the band blast through old favourite ‘Unfinished Business’ and then rip into new album tracks ‘The Power and the Glory’ (which maybe falls a bit short), but final track ‘Bigger Than Us’ is a monster.

The only question is how much bigger does this band wants to get?
With such great songs and depth to their sound, they are heading for the arena tours. All the White Lies need to do now is tell the truth.

Matthew Cooper

I try to write knowledgeable things about music. Everything else I get quite annoyed about. Arsenal fan. Terrible swimmer.