Passion Pit with Max Tundra / The Joy Formidable at Northumbria University

Reviewed by Scott McLoughlin

I could talk about Passion Pit for hours. Oh wait, no I can’t; that was definitely a lie. Musically Passion Pit were impeccable, bar the technical failure resulting in no music for 20 minutes mid set. Oh, and the fact they were dependent on a backing track on a laptop. Oh yeah! I nearly forgot how intensely boring they were on stage. That aside they were very very good. It might appear a contradiction, but I would definitely watch them again, given the opportunity. The singer, what’s his face? I can’t say his name let alone spell it. Anyway, he was very good also, in a high pitched sort of way. In fact they were so good it was like watching a rehearsal; one in which the crowd was still a hypothetical situation yet to be encountered. In the mean time, the crowd still being a fiction, the Passion Pit boys concentrated on getting the music as close to a complete note perfect recital of their album as possible. It is fair to say they lacked stage presence and a quality that would let me believe their performance was all live and happening, and that I was one of the lucky few in Northumbria getting to witness it all! Like poetry read in a monotone voice, passion pit came, played, and left with no personal investment beyond that put into writing the music in the first place. A direct contradiction to ‘the Joy Formidable’: who delivered yet another powerful performance. They also further reaffirmed their position as a live act to be watched out for; hopefully they will figure out how to capture their live quality on record. I know! Let us as a society with a vested interest in getting the most out of bands (and pushing the boundaries of new music), lock Passion Pit and the Joy Formidable in the same room until they take for themselves respectively the best traits of the other i.e. the ability to record and perform! Hmmm…

Now! MAX TUNDRA! I could literally try and describe him forever. The coolest performer I’ve seen in yonks. He may in fact be the least cool person in the world, but the fact he doesn’t care and does his own thing makes him pretty darn cool in my humble opinion. He’s like your Dad dancing to happy hardcore whilst absolutely off his face on acid (or something equally hallucinogenic) but on a stage! In front of all your friends, and he’s embarrassing you, but somehow you conclude you still love him, and then you realise that everybody else in the crowd thinks that watching the mad man dance it is nothing short of the best thing ever! Finally, you realise he’s actually quite good at playing music, all be it weird, and not linear or simple music. His songs are predominantly electro and synth based. He sort of sounds like a bad scat singer’s impression of music, but twisted so you’d expect to hear at cabaret night on a cruise linear; but played on a synthesiser, to dance beats. That is actually as close as I can get to describing him without sounding like a nut job. He simply is crazy, hard to listen to, but somehow brilliant. You know you are in for a good show if one man is playing dance remixes of the sound of music with a variety of crazy instruments that look like they’ve come from a 1960’s toyshop. Youtube this guy’s live performances, for laughs if you want, but you might like myself discover something you like.

3.5 / 5