Performance - Unconsoled

The North has risen again. Or more specifically, Manchester has, and its music scene is getting pretty crowded these days. So what is a Mancunian band to do? If they can make themselves unique, all the better. The unusually named pop trio Performance features an internationally published novelist, Joe Stretch. Pretty extraordinary.

The name of their next single, ‘Unconsoled’, comes from an unlikely source: it’s the title of Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1995 much maligned novel about a pianist who travels to a foreign land for a show, suffers temporary amnesia and has to find himself again before going on. Not exactly what you’d expect from a ‘pop band’. But judging from the sound of the single, prepare to expect the unexpected from Performance.

Electronic beats at the start make you think you’re in for a run of the mill electropop track, but the song changes direction quickly into much more appealing territory. Their three members are childhood friends, so they have something in common with the xx and Friendly Fires. Their closeness feels evident in the tightness of the guitars and drums against Stretch’s vocals, the result recalling earlier, halcyon power pop. If anything, the drums are a bit too driving, as if Stretch has to force his voice to follow the pounding rhythm.

Along with previously released single ‘The Living’, ‘Unconsoled’ gleams with the promise that Performance could be one of the best power pop bands of the new decade.