NME Presents Part 2: White Lies at Bowery Ballroom
Posted by Jess. D on March 31, 2009
White Lies at Bowery Ballroom 3.27.09
The second half of the NME Presents double-headlining bill was post-punk Londoners, White Lies. This band spends a lot of time contemplating the dark and the morbid, but the result is extremely romantic and affecting pop music.
Uniformly clad in all black and backed by bright white lights, the band played an impressive set of material from their UK #1 album, To Lose My Life. White Lies seemed to sneak up on us at the beginning of this year — they demanded attention by gaining rapid popularity in the UK and debuting at #1 while chatter in the States remained at a low whisper. Before we knew it, they had already played in NYC at CMJ and subsequently made quite a splash at SXSW earlier this month.
White Lies are a band that needs to be seen to be fully experienced what with their brooding aesthetic and intensity that compliments the music perfectly.
Singer, Harry McVeigh, fought off a bad cold in order to play what he called their favorite venue in their favorite city. He obviously struggled through pain to hit some of those straining low notes and the crowd was grateful as everyone stood mesmerized by highlights like To Lose My Life, A Place to Hide, Unfinished Business and set closer, Death.
Let’s hope NME brings us acts as high quality as these next year.
MP3: White Lies – Unfinished Business or zShare
MP3: White Lies – Love Lockdown (Kanye West Cover) or zShare
matt said
This blog’s great!! Thanks :).
janet said
Those are quite the pair of sneakers, I wonder if each member of the band has a pair of if they’re just for the lead singer. I’m so jealous that you’ve seen them live, I was debating seeing them at Coachella but I don’t think I can brave the desert this time of year!
If you want to see them again, or watch an interview they are on the new Josh Schwartz show Rockville CA (www.rockvilleca.com), you can’t see what shoes they’re wearing though, sadly.
TLC said
Awesome…they were great live! The other band members were wearing regular fancy shoes, btw :)
ImpressionableYouth said
Damn! Those shoes be blingin’!
Definitely a cool bunch of guys. I was lucky enough to have a quick chat with them when they visited a radio station in Toronto. They were genuinely surprised that some of us fans had come out to greet them that day. Such humble, polite fellows.
Wouldn’t have expected that, judging by the showy sneakers.
TLC vs. White Lies: Harry McVeigh Tells the Truth About Lies « Tastes Like Caramel: Transatlantic Pop Culture said
[...] all of a sudden To Lose My Life was #1 in the UK! In March we were thrilled to have attended the NME Tour featuring White Lies and Friendly Fires, a line-up that one might consider an odd pairing from the surface until you [...]