It is Black Friday night in Leeds and the city centre is a dark, decadent, and slightly dangerous place to be. One of many competing and contrasting events taking place this evening and harnessing that dissolute vibe is Desire at Headrow House, a point at which the Canadian electronic duo and a former textile mill shamelessly meet. These are the things that synth-pop dreams are made of.
From Lisbon to Lyon to London to Leeds, but four stops on the Games People Play tour. By the time that Desire reach Helsinki six days before Christmas, they will have played no less than 25 dates and visited umpteen countries across Europe and the UK in precisely one month. Out in support of their upcoming album that gives this tour its name, these guys are certainly not short on stamina.
As ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ ends System Olympia’s thundering DJ set, the Grace Jones’ classic has barely had time to finish before Desire take to the stage and launch straight into ‘Darkside.’ Released earlier this year as a single, the song blurs thematic lines between fantasy and reality in a haze of pulsating synth-noir.
Vocalist Megan Louise and visual artist and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Jewel are Desire, the band they co-founded 15 years ago in Montreal. On stage with them tonight is Louise on keyboards who adds further visual cool to their presence as well as considerable melodic texture to the wash of synthetic noise over which Megan Louise’s voice soars.
A Desire performance is high on sound, vision, and drama. Euphoric, theatrical, and dancefloor-ready, their tunes arrive fully formed in front of a cavalcade of images projected onto a large screen behind them. It is a complete audiovisual experience of which Megan Louise is a strong focal point, a maelstrom of whirring motion wherein nostalgia and the future collide.
For ‘Don’t Call’ from their 2009 debut album II, Megan Louise grabs a vintage rotary dial phone as if to reinforce the fact that the song comes immersed in 80’s fist-pumping synth-pop. A little later she conjoins with a human skeleton skull during ‘Silver Machine’ from the brilliant Italians Do It Better record label compilation album After Dark 4. For all the theatricality of this song and the unashamedly retro feel of Desire’s music, just don’t expect to hear her reproduce the “Alas, poor Yorick” soliloquy.
Their love of the 1980s is further evidenced by their sublime interpretation of New Order’s ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ in which they retain the soulful melody of the original yet underscore it with an even greater muscular heft. Desire appear to then sign off with the brilliant pop revivalism of ‘Under Your Spell’ from their debut album.
But they were never going to get away that easily and are soon back for three more killer tunes, including ‘Sad Ibiza Song,’ another prime cut from After Dark 4, where Desire collaborated with Wolfram on their shared love for Italo disco music, before ending with the unbridled energy of their latest single ‘Drama Queen.’
That they still have more than enough petrol in the Desire tank to then head off to Headrow House’s sister venue Belgrave Music Hall a couple of hundred yards away for the official after-show party and DJ sets that will continue long into the night says much for their abiding stamina and the unquestionable passion for what it is that they do, and clearly do so well.
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos of Desire at Headrow House
