It’s not often that I tumble out of bed and roll straight to my laptop to give a shout out to a band I’ve just seen, but today I’ve been driven to it. Thanks a lot, Hella Better Dancer.
For anyone who knows about this impossibly good four-piece from North London, let me kill the elephant in the room; Hella Better Dancer are young. They’re sixth formers. This article is not a paean to a band who are quite good because they’re still young; Hella Better Dancer are good way beyond their years.
The equally young Camden Barfly crowd have already been warmed up by the readily charming folk stylings of O.Chapman (w/ Georgia Bruce) by the time HBD take the stage. Fifteen seconds in to their opener, ‘23’, it’s hard to figure out what to admire first; there is some serious talent on display. Frontwoman Tilly Scantlebury comes off as a ballsier Kate Nash without the stupid accent, while Josh Cohen’s extraordinary, imaginative basslines throb somewhere between Flea and Carlos D. Lead guitarist Soph Nathan adds the icing on the cake, schooling about 150 Camdenite wannabes with effortlessly cool jigsaw guitar licks. Baby-faced drummer Lucas Greenwood’s style, meanwhile, gives the impressions of a boy raised on a healthy diet of Foals and Maccabees.
The effect is phenomenal. Hella Better Dancer’s half-hour set is ridiculously tight. Seven mini-gems are rolled through with some panache; the Barfly sweatbox appreciates them accordingly. By the time the needling guitar of ‘The City Sea’ fades, the crowd are hopelessly amenable, and the scramble to buy their debut EP ‘Please Stay Here’ at the front begins. I only got it yesterday, and I still can’t wait for the next one.
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