A spellbinding performance from Warpaint at All Points East.
London's newest festival, the ten-day extravaganza All Points East has hosted a plethora of amazing acts including Bjork, Nick Cave, Yeah Yeah Yeahs over the last couple of weekends. Taking over Field Day's usual spot in East-London's Victoria Park, the festival has shared many of the same acts as
Primavera which took place concurrently in Barcelona. Saturday hosted headliners The National, Future Islands and The War On Drugs, but taking the stage at around 18.15 after Cat Power to warm it up was US-rock band, Warpaint.
Having played Primavera on Thursday, Warpaint have been playing various international festival dates throughout 2018. As ever, the group enchanted the entire field at All Points East on Saturday with their own brand of spellbinding prog-rock, playing a 40-minute set of material from their entire back catalogue, interspersed with proggy-jams and beautiful noise rock soundscapes.
With the sun beating down on the crowd, a rousing version of 'Love Is to Die' is introduced by Theresa Wayman, as she drops her guitar to focus solely on vocals. Also taking the opportunity to shout out a product placement for Ray-Ban, who are indeed sponsoring the group on tour - getting that awkward moment out of the way they rip through the pulsating track to the crowd's delight, huge cheers in between each song.
Set highlight is the performance of uplifting track 'New Song', which again inspired wolf whistles and lots of swirling and dancing from the crowd, as the songs opening riff amplified out around the golden-hued field. An ethereal version of 'Billie Holiday' see's Emily Kokal switch to take lead vocals, something the group do throughout their performance. The set closes as the audience are left feeling they've just witnessed an unmissable live act. Warpaint are spellbinding, their seamless translation of studio recordings to the live arena, along with the non-stop prog-jams that break up each song add a hypnotic quality to the almost entirely gap-less set . Their shimmering dream-rock guitars echo out for the last time before Future Islands take to the stage.
