As influences go, there’s no shortage of acts who take their cues from The Pixies or Nick Cave, though you might be harder pushed to list those able to do both simultaneously. Similarly, you wouldn’t expect a band with a tall, pale and brooding frontman to have a cheeky, quick-witted guitarist as his right hand man. Come to think of it, the Heartwear Process just shouldn't work – on paper there’s too much contrast in their individual styles – yet the Reading quintet somehow find themselves just weeks away from the release of their debut single and tonight, playing alongside the heavily-touted Six Nation State and Fleeing New York, the Water Rats theatre is a packed mass of warm bodies.
Haunting frontman Tom Purcell stalks the stage, his eyes piercing the audience as he unfurls his cautionary tales of danger and dread. Behind him, lead guitarist Jay stands near-motionless next to his drummer, providing high vocal harmonies and bluesy stop-start chords over Purcell’s laments and trying to hold everything together, because over at Stage Right, Paul Smith of the cheeky grin is hammering out jerking discordant chords as he and bassist Chris go at it, playfully barging into each other, screaming into the microphone with a wink and a nudge as though the alternate reality their leader is conjuring up centre stage means little to them.
You’d have thought the contrasting styles would cancel each other out, yet they somehow meet spectacularly in the middle as a prime example of a band greater than a sum of its parts. The songs share their creators’ contrasting quirks as each member chips in, from the straight-up Stripes-esque pop of 'Room of Little Ease' and 'Brian Jones' to 'Wolf Song', a slice of pure Nick Cave, whilst 'My Hollow Friend' becomes some kind of Pixies versus Fickle Public hybrid. Despite being fundamentally different, they are all held together by Purcell’s commanding vocals but the additional character traits are essential. Should they elect to all stand po-faced, the ‘Process could easily be seen as trying to take themselves too seriously whereas at the other end of the scale, the continuous paedophilic references in the Lolita-based set-closer 'Humble Pie' probably wouldn’t have the same effect delivered with a grin in place of a mournful scowl.
Yet with such a fine balance, the fragility occasionally becomes apparent. During 'Humble Pie', Tom falls off the side of the stage perfectly in time to the music, a blur of arms reaching for some kind of purchase as he disappears behind the speakers as the only uncalculated move made all evening momentarily breaks the spell over his captive audience. Frustrated, Tom’s response to this is to spit his venomous lyrics with extra vigour in all directions, whilst behind him Paul flails wildly, knocking a microphone straight up into the face of Chris, chipping his tooth and knocking him backwards. Chaos reigns, the balance between band and audience restored. The Heartwear machine survives another gig, with any luck it will claim more victims come the summer.
