Poliça, The Ritz, Manchester

Set in front of their backdrop (and latest album, Shulamith’s cover) of a severely bloodied head, Poliça deliver their signature swaying electronic songs with conviction, if without aplomb. With an effects-laden sound on record they create intriguing songs of beguiling depth at a hypnotic pace, but unfortunately in physicality, Channy Leaneagh’s undoubtedly talented vocals become a woozy blur set against the mechanical pace of instrumentation.

Opening with ‘Spilling Lines’ and a shockingly early showing for mega-hit ‘Lay Your Cards Out’ the band try to fly a kite before whipping up anything more than a breeze. As the uninvolved tone of the room suggests, that kite falls straight to the ground. ‘Very Cruel’ marks an industrial turn, a more suffocating mood and an increasingly forceful proposition until the momentum subsides into another trippy swirling vocal, the one constant amongst the songs on show.

Without the clarity to create discernible peaks and troughs, and allowing for a certain lack of variety to the songs, the set is all too willingly averaged out. With no major highlight nor any crippling disappointments, not the beepy trance of ‘Smug’ or the synthesised chaos of ‘Vegas’ create the centrepiece the performance longs for. The high-water mark for the gig is the contribution of bassist Chris Bierden who repeatedly lays out strong foundations that your average post-punk band can be proud of only for Leaneagh’s vocals to drift fleetingly above. In contrast to leading with their strongest hand the Minneapolis act close the setlist by stripping back ‘Leading to Death’ and then abandoning their own songs all together for their interpretation of Lesley Gore’s ‘You Don’t Own Me’.

The performance lacks the intimacy to truly tell a compelling story but doesn’t have the power to resort to an energetic bombast. It surrenders itself to muted applause and head down shuffling, not entrancing nor invigorating; the sound and sight of a band playing all their songs, without making mistakes or lacking commitment but still not connecting on every level. Poliça just sort of happen in front of a room of people, who in turn seemed as though they just happen to be at a Poliça gig.

Poliça deliver what is certainly not a terrible performance, due to its appealing parts, but parts that somehow lose their lustre in becoming a whole: the greatest emotion generated is the tension of waiting for the click into place that never comes.