Thursday 22/10/09 Do Make Say Think @ The Scala, London

Every inch of the Scala’s stage is crawling with people tonight – Do Make Say Think are a sizable proposition in any venue, with a combined head count of ten, but this visual aspect is certainly justified by the sheer energy of tonight’s performance. Their latest album Other Truths, released this week, is in many ways the pinnacle of their achievements so far, managing to bring together the myriad facets of their impressive back catalogue yet still carve out its own distinct identity. As befits an album launch party of sorts, for the entire time the venue is open this evening the mood is jovial, celebratory – a product of the three bands playing, all of whom are essentially Do Make Say Think in slightly different permutations. Across the course of the evening members appear onstage briefly before disappearing for a further few songs then re-emerging again. The result is a set of performances that seem to bleed into one another, the same instrumentation and performers lending this evening’s show the air of a band jam session that we’re privileged enough to be allowed to witness.

And a privilege it is – first band The Happiness Project is Charles Spearin’s baby, and this evening he appears onstage backed by most of his day project’s members. The music they craft is delicate and unassuming, sharing a pastoral ease and human sensibility with Do Make Say Think, but stripped of the latter’s dedication to mind-blurring crescendos its emotional release is subtler and more considered. Each song pivots around a sampled interview with one of Spearin’s friends – his baby daughter’s mumbled complaints, his deaf neighbour – made to sing by the careful synchronization of violin or piano to the bubbling melody of human speech. It’s stirring stuff, eerie and beautiful in equal measure, and certainly worthy of immediate further investigation.

Ohad Benchetrit’s performance as Years begins solo, with a series of delicate, cyclical guitar instrumentals that pivot gently around a central theme before rising to crescendo point and back down. Towards the end of his set, the rest of the band join him, providing a neat bridge to the headline performance – admittedly broken only by a brief and perhaps slightly pointless interlude. Still, as a bookend it works well: once Do Make Say Think proper emerge onstage and launch into Other Truths’ opener ‘Do’ it becomes evident just how intuitive they have become as a group during their years of operation. ‘Auberge Le Mouton Noir’ rises and falls gracefully, ‘Fredericia’ is a revelation of frantic, spiraling percussion and the brass crescendo of ‘Say’ – only the second time they’ve ever performed it, apparently – reaches glorious heights of volume and feeling.

What remains so refreshing about Do Make Say Think though is the life-affirming quality of everything they write, a quality shared (along with several members) with their contemporaries in Broken Social Scene. Given that so much instrumental rock is sad, serious, beard-stroking music, their huge, uplifting epics are a cause for celebration in themselves. They close the main set tonight with the one-two sucker punch of ‘Horns Of A Rabbit’ and ‘The Universe’, barely drawing breath between the end of one and the opening caterwauls of the next. It’s a fitting end to an immersive performance.