Lip Critic Review: NYC's Re-offering of Abrasive Dance-Punk

The Windmill, Brixton

“All my life I just wanted to live.”

Coalescing with tonight’s venue, a breeding ground for those on genres' outskirts, The Windmill supports the overseas dance-punk outfit, Lip Critic, for a voracious foray into their prized debut LP.

If it weren’t evident before, the insatiable hunger for punk’s experimental scene surges stronger than ever - look no further than Viagra Boys' audacious carelessness, Idles' matured evolution, Amyl and the Sniffers' brazen hysteria (so on and so forth). For Lip Critic, this venture amongst their recent provisions prove simultaneously frenetic and infectious for tonight's mosh-thirsty crowd. Consuming the cramped confines of Brixton’s Windmill, the crowd imminently macerate one another, transforming our crucible into a makeshift-sauna. ‘Milky Max’ compounds this frenzy further, hooks seething with distorted synths and interspliced with chaotic breakbeats, ultimately revelled at its cataclysmic chorus (“All my life I just wanted to live / Now I gotta die just because of what I did”).

Retaining an eerie reminiscence to Gorillaz’s knack for pairing dance-inspired beats with abrasive rock-driven anthems, as well as a likeness to more recent contemporaries Maruja and Model/Actriz, Lip Critic continually brim with an enticing enthusiasm. Personified by their other latest singles ‘The Heart’ and ‘It’s the Magic’, the 4-piece outfit show signs of a punk-led defiance (launching, diving, spreading amongst the crowd) alongside singalong choruses which veer into the realms of modern art-rock a-la Everything Everything (“All that time I waited just to find out I’m from hell / I burn right through my mortal shell”).

Although these sounds prove familiar and favourable with tonight’s audience, such an aura proves trite and stale in moments; perhaps succumbing to the lack of diverse instrumentals on-stage (2 drummers, 2 synth players). Whilst such tracks as ‘Angel’ offer a jazzier, matured avenue into the somewhat shallow discography of Lip Critic, their remaining tracks performed tonight (‘In the Wawa’, ‘Entry Level Stud’) fall short of offering much else to the band’s dynamic, a tangible weariness from the crowd as the set naturally concludes.

Yet the future deems bright for this up-and-coming NYC band looking to revitalise and rejuvenate the ‘postmodern’ dance-punk scene once and for all - stricken from the days of LCD Soundsystem. With the crowd bristling and bustling against one another, The Windmill proved the perfect accompanier to Lip Critic. Housing their highly-anticipated debut LP which, whilst underbaked in parts, personifies a promising trajectory for such a cantankerous band looking to set alight each untouched patch of the underground scene.

6.5/10

Lip Critic's debut LP, Hex Dealer, is out now via Partisan Records and can be found below.

Photos is courtesy of Alex Howard whose work can be found here.