My review: Ist Ist Live in Manchester 2nd February 2023

 My Review

Ist Ist - live in Manchester

33 Oldham street

2nd February 2022

In the air.

It was in the air of this beautiful dark Manchester that all souls present would be shocked once again by the class, the style, the passion of the four Mancunians who displayed a grit that brought us all into an idyll we all longed for.

I think they know very well that around their music is a following of people more and more involved and excited, and this small stage, without any distracting lights, revealed their powerful ability to create images before our eyes.

Second consecutive gig here and the impression that they have become ready for the big leap to fame.

With two albums behind them and the impossibility to play these jewels because of the COVID situation, they give the impression that they have been playing concerts every day instead, such is the amalgamation and their impetuousness on stage.

The pleasure of listening to an excellent song that will end up on their third album is great: tireless knights of beauty, they make our mouths water and we are already ready to hear what will be another splendid album.

Twenty songs skilfully inspect their already rich catalogue, the setlist glides through the power of compositions that reveal a talent that has grown older, and a compositional growth that exceeds all expectations.

The old songs are as if restored, full of additional strength and pathos, showing that the road travelled has not made them old and worn out: on the contrary, they still sound fresh and capable of shaking.

To listen to them is to see how time passing is not always a wound but a chance to always start again from what has been done.

Night's arm is still a song capable of making us mute, servants of its every desire.

And, like all the others from the early days, it reminds us that we were not mistaken in being very impressed.

The songs on The Art Of Lying are finding great sap in being played live: they seem to be born the moment they reach our ears, giving us shivers without escape from our skin.

And if each of their concerts resembles a journey, here we become suitcases in which to put the songs as absolutely necessary clothes so to dress ourselves with unique emotions.

What becomes pleasantly unbearable is the amount of beauty that we have to see living inside our hearts, like a pleasant torture that prevents us from leaving this small and enchanting hall.

Then: they know how to sew to the obvious approach of sadness that permeates their compositions a series of vibrant tensions, of frustration that is purified as an act of conscious shamans, like a whipping that serves to make our skin awake.

And it is inevitable that we reach a delirium that shuts our mouths, makes us dance only in our minds because our legs are in a perpetual state of arrest, it would be enough for example to see what happens to us during Fats Cats Drown In Milk, with the sky that seems to collapse the vault of 33 Oldham street.

The impact between the guitars and the synths sublimates everything during the concert, giving even more prominence to the bass and the drums, which are continuous sabre rattling, to which the mere idea of opposing would lead us to pain.

Ist Ist are also joy: because they make us feel repressed feelings, they console us, they activate our qualities in a listening that matures and pushes us to improve.

The new song Fool's Paradise is a scissor, a double blade that cuts through the veins because it is full of neurotic beauty, its march irresistible and puts us in line like soldiers who are not given the chance to speak. Another Gem shines in the casket of these arresting Architects of emotion.

I also love their ability to smile when incidents occur, like during the opening Wolves which suddenly saw a song coming from the speakers that covered theirs: nothing, smiles, Andy, the bassist,  finding time to have fun and the machine continues as if unaware of the fact.

This being serious but not taking themselves too seriously makes them even more engaging and likeable.

With The Waves and If Taste Like Wine we flew through the sky intoxicated, free, stupendously attracted by the lack of gravity, songs that like an engagement ring brought us joy and serenity.

Heads on Speaks: it was also time for tears, of a disruptive force that crashed us, with Mat's keyboards that like a broom took away the fake joy that we inevitably live every day, "You are the reason I want to be alone" and away we went, with our tissues full...

So much more happened in this evening where the right and useful things for us came together in these songs to make us savour the taste of our existences.

Alex Dematteis 

Salford