Pink Kink @ Castle Hotel, Manchester, 14 Apr

Live Review by Charles Gray | 19 Apr 2017

The hype surrounding Pink Kink is fast reaching fever pitch. The five-piece band, whose members each hail from different European countries, have managed to stir up quite a fuss despite their total lack of recorded output, thanks to an immense and hard-to-define live set.

Shifting seamlessly from genre to genre without at any point feeling embellished or forced, the group have a palpable chemistry; reminiscent of Warpaint in its natural improvisations, fuelling suspicions that the unhinged fun fuels the creativity. Playing under an array of underwear and decked out in glitter and facepaint, the group manage to draw on everything from garage punk and shoegaze to jazz, electro and pop. And that could be in the space of one song.

Vocals are divvied up between the five members, but the crux is lent to the striking Bridget, whose swoon floats over the top of the band's delicate concoction before ultimately switching to a more immediate approach, wherein the rest of her bandmates add yet more immediacy. Gender equality and multiculturalism are the main messages (if not purposefully then by proxy), while there’s a sense of boundary-pushing purpose in this wonderfully obtuse quintet that has been absent in guitar-led music for some time. That they have yet to release any music only adds to the mystique.

They finishing with I Like TV, which sees the band dancing voraciously and singing about TV and pizza with a youthful zest, undercut with cynicism, that juxtaposes vividly with the rest of their set. With a debut single set to be released, and judging by tonight's set, Pink Kink could be on course to truly shake up the landscape and redefine the paradigms of what is possible from a four-minute pop song.

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