Jungle live at Victoria Warehouse review – cool grooves on a hot night

Artist	Jungle
Venue	O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester
Date	18 September 2021
Opener	Talk About It
Closer	Time
Highlight	Julia
Undertone rating	4/5

Jungle topped off their two-night residency at Victoria Warehouse with pizzazz and confidence, aided by a dazzling set and the many dance-ready revellers in front of them. All that was missing was some half decent ventilation.

Stood on the mezzanine floor inside the enormous brick and iron core of Victoria Warehouse, it was easy to imagine the stage smoke that hung above the thousands of heads below as steam from some sort of giant spa session or, worse, many hundreds of cubic metres of evaporated sweat. It’s a disgusting image, but it certainly felt hot enough; even outside the dense pack of bodies below, my friend Emma and I quickly found ourselves coated in fluid, with our jackets cast aside on the nearest metal barrier and the cups of chilled water offered by the bar behind us guzzled by the gallon. Even the performers – who seemingly lacked their own onstage fans – remarked that the place was quickly becoming a sauna before wrapping up their set.

A big part of the problem was that the music was just too good. We danced compulsively to the hypnotically funky grooves of Jungle, stepping from side to side and shrugging our shoulders inside the giant greenhouse like a crowd possessed. Much has been made in recent weeks and months of the band’s huge summer hit Keep Moving: a powerful statement of post-Covid determination, a reminder that literal and metaphorical dance are the keys to happiness. This evening it was simply a command to be followed in spite of the rising mercury.

If Tom McFarland and Josh Lloyd-Watson were the night’s neo-soul cult leaders, it must be said that they weren’t very imposing ones. In fact, the duo known for keeping themselves out of the media spotlight were remarkably humble in their performance, with many of the big moments of the night handed over to a stellar backing band. Vocalist Andreya Triana in particular had moments of brilliance (and took the lead entirely on songs like All of the Time) whilst George Day made the most of a busy drum groove on Smile. McFarland and Lloyd-Watson’s role seemed to be mostly as poster boys with their own (seemingly rather inconsequential) keyboards at the front of the band, with the exception of their creamy falsetto voices that can be found on almost every track they’ve ever produced.

Any excitement in the room about the warm glow of gold that filled the stage immediately before the band’s initial entrance dissipated within minutes thanks to an endless preamble of wobbling basses and promising strings lines that were pumped through the speakers. By the time the band did come on, the crowd seemed to have got tired of cheering an empty stage. The main feeling once Talk About It booted up to start the night was one of relief rather than exhilarating excitement. The opening bass line on that track may be one of the strongest assets of Jungle’s 2021 album, but it failed to atone for the indulgent delay that preceded it.

Nonetheless, once the band got moving, the hits came thick and fast. Tracks like Keep Moving and Beat 54 (All Good Now) delighted the crowd and sprung up a number of teens sat on the shoulders of friends below, flailing their arms about amidst the purrs of Geo Jordan’s bass and the gentle thud of Day’s kick drum. On the less convincing numbers, a tastefully-used LED screen behind the band came to the rescue, with Bonnie Hill seeing the band’s silhouettes cut into parallel lines that resembled a sunset, or on Can’t Stop The Stars, when the band was backdropped by – you guessed it – a dizzying display of stars.

As I’ve found with similarly repetitive funksters Parcels, playing a good two bars over and over again works much better in person than on an album. The few thousand people screaming along and clapping their hands to songs like Fire and What D’You Know About Me? – both of which fundamentally just riffs rather than songs with any harmony or development – made annoying repetition much more acceptable, with longer songs giving more of a chance to get properly ‘lost in the groove’. That said, there is a limit. There’s little compelling about the two chords that dominate All of the Time (a poor choice for the main set closer), and Casio and Cherry were both drawn out for longer than their sleepy grooves warranted.

Where the band wheeled out the fiery material that has stood the test of time from their 2014 debut the musicality and excitement reached a new level. Julia, a song which accompanied me on many long bus rides during my first years at high school, was a real thrill with its adrenaline-boosting synthetic brass and drums fills in the finale that sounded explosive up against the understated drumming found in your average Jungle track. All it was missing was some actual horns. Truth, Jungle’s closest thing to a rock song, was delivered with similar punch.

Busy Earnin’ – the radio-dominating breakout hit – was sensibly saved for the encore even though that siren-like drone sounds more suited to a grand entrance. What little voice we had left was expended on belting out that riff: an earworm so perfect it must have earnt the band millions in the years since its creation. There was plenty of proof that night in the old warehouse that the melody’s power is still very much alive. The tried-and-true thump of Time was a well chosen closer, with the whole night ending emphatically on a short, sharp burst of symbols. Still, it was little distraction from the ever-rising temperature; the applause had barely waned before Emma and I began the search for the quickest route outside and into a blissful Manchester evening breeze.

It’s tempting to let my subjective experience (which happened to be terrible) downgrade my review of the gig. Along with the oppressive heat, being up and at the back of the venue made us feel a little separated from the barely-visible faces 50 metres in front of us, even though getting ensconced in the dancing melee of sticky bodies below would have likely brought a completely different host of problems. The truth is, the vast majority of the problems on the night can be traced down to a poorly ventilated room and a ground floor full of bars that thought £3.50 water bottles were a fair replacement for tap water. However, even through the stage smoke haze, Jungle were clearly giving it their all with a high energy, polished set that often served up some stunning riffs. That said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad to leave.

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