- Plenty of dance music live acts forget to be either live or much of a show. Not Theo Parrish. While it might have been hard to imagine how the Sound Signature boss's studio creations could be made into living, breathing songs performed by a full band, any uncertainties waned as soon as the show began. Though the group was assembled only recently, there's a cohesion and understanding among its members that allows every track to be rebuilt from the ground up. More than that, though, fan favourites, from "Soul Control" to "Changes," "Footwork" to "Solitary Flight," all were reborn in sumptuous new form, teased out with genuine musicianship, delivered at higher tempos or wholly deconstructed and re-framed in oodles of psychedelic reverb.
"It's just jazz, innit," someone said in my ear at one point. It wasn't really, but the band's willingness to let things evolve on their own did make it feel like an impromptu jam session. Far from getting lost in self-indulgent passages of instrumental noodling, though, the near two-hour set progressed with considered dynamism. Always groovy but never stuck in one groove, it started with funky disco soul before dissipating into downbeat passages, then peaked with a rave-tempo rework of "Solitary Flight" that had the 1,000-strong crowd stomping their feet and punching the air as if it were 3 AM in a sweaty basement, not 10:30 PM on a Tuesday night in an old theatre.
At the heart of it all was Parrish, stood centre stage over his keys, every bit the confident and comfortable frontman. As well as adding vocal accents to certain tracks, his main role was playing the melodies. What makes his music so special is his ability to write devastatingly simple but hugely pained hooks, and these sounded just as good live, mechanically ground out with one stiff finger while, off to his side, Amp Fiddler played much looser and livelier motifs.
Underpinning the whole experience were the tight-as-you-like drums, which delivered turbo-charged 4/4 beats as well as more disheveled grooves. Instilling a more explicit sense of movement and spectacle in the whole thing were the four dancers who were always onstage in front of the band. They seemed to divide opinion early on, but by the end of the show they were whooped and cheered every time they popped a limb, spun on their heels or dropped to the floor. After ending on a fully revamped version of Skye's "Ain't No Need," a track he often bangs in his DJ sets, Parrish beamed while the crowd chanted his name. "Wooo, Manchester, you make me feel good!" The feeling was mutual.