Restless souls with voracious creative appetites, These New Puritans’ previous appearances at the Barbican saw their ranks bolstered by children’s choirs, Japanese drummers and venerated chamber orchestra the Britten Sinfonia – whose conductor, André de Ridder, is one of their biggest fans. For this latest presentation, dubbed The Blue Door, brothers Jack and George Barnett have penned new pieces and commissioned accompanying short films and visuals, along with rescoring their back catalogue to accommodate a 16-piece ensemble, including brass, orchestral percussion and sopranos.
This is definitely big music, then. But while the visceral tribal rhythms that drive such pieces as Inside the Rose shake the walls, the group rarely blunder into bombast, Jack Barnett arranging this expanded unit with subtlety and great effect. Fragment Two reimagines goth as scored by David Axelrod, with sopranos singing eerie choral harmonies and four vibraphonists playing off each other with mathematical precision, each element in perfect orbit with the others. The heroic yearning of the brass septet – especially on the poetic Into the Fire – suggests that if there’s an industrial influence upon These New Puritans’ music, it’s as much Grimethorpe Colliery Band as Nine Inch Nails.
But while their ambition echoes the kindred electronic/symphonic summit meeting of peers such as Efterklang, this only underscores how These New Puritans want for a vocalist as distinct and emotive as that band’s Casper Clausen. There are moments when Jack Barnett the singer rises to the challenges set by Jack Barnett the composer/arranger. His brooding delivery on the mournful, disquieting Where the Trees Are on Fire, or the sinister and powerful We Want War, sees him shaking against the microphone stand, casting unconscious Christ-like poses and howling with Dave Gahan-esque intensity.
Just as often, though, his murmur gets lost in the cinematic sweep of the music, his vocals the least interesting speck within his vast sonic canvases. Along with visuals that too often suggest James Bond credits scenes given avant-garde twists, it leaves These New Puritans as merely the sum of their parts, their stirring, impressive soundtracks frustratingly blank and in need of focus.
