Poliça at Troxy

The famous feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone once wrote in her powerful Note from the First Year: “…women’s rights (liberation, if you prefer) has dynamite revolutionary potential…”. Meanwhile, Channy Leaneagh – the singer and leader of the Minneapolis band Poliça – sings on Chain My Name: “…so are we made just to fight all our lives…” as a form of liberating chant. As the great feminists were fighting a personal war against the chauvinist common sense, so Poliça have released a sturdy and disruptive anthem full of passion and stories about women’s battles for love and rights, programmatically entitled Shulamith.

Inside the elegant and art deco Troxy in Tower Hamlets, the band played their music in front of a crowd of more than 3000 people. It has to be said that the show presented last night was honestly one of the best in the last month. Not only because the quality of the sound at Troxy is superb and not only because the venue is full of inspiring elegance, but also because the band onstage is genuinely great.

Two drummers, one bass player and Channy Leaneagh at the vocals, plus a synth, several effects (mostly pre-set delays, echoes and sequencers) played great pop music with a twist of new wave and synth pop. This mix of electro and hypnagogia with mostly new wave and post-punk arrangement works perfectly, as is clear in songs like Warrior Lord, Tiff, and I Need $.  It works so well that the names that jump to mind are Pet Shop Boys, Moloko (Very Cruel), Matia Bazar (Chain My Name) – the best in terms of references. For about an hour and a half Poliça played almost every song from their debut album Give You the Ghost and from the recent Shulamith, offering a magnetic show onstage, made up by an excellent bass player and with a sinuous sound enveloping the audience. Special mention to the opening act – with the unlikely name of Marijuana Deathsquads: a collective made with the members of Poliça playing an experimental and improvised electro noise. A must-see live set.

The Poliça live set ends up with three encores, one of them – a cover of Lesley Gore’s You Don’t Own Me – defines one more time the liberating anthem of singer Channy. Congratulations for this groundbreaking energy.

 

Lorenzo Cibrario

For further information and future events visit Poliça’s website here.

Watch the video for I Need $ here: