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Darcie Haven sets the tone beautifully with her deeply personal storytelling glowing with an indie-pop production. Her soft-spoken presence and crystalline vocals ease the crowd into a space of quiet attention. Her performance holds an emotional rawness that commands the room with songs including ‘Doomsday’, ‘Hollywood’ and ‘Girlfriend’ that are woven with themes of intimacy, confusion, and delicate longing that float effortlessly through the venue.
The stage engulfs in smoke lit by a blue light hue and set with striking sculptural white face masks mounted on stands. Four dancers emerge and pick up a mask, taking a seat and holding it up to their faces. The lights drop and BANKS walks up the staircase to join them in taking a seat centre stage and holding a mask up above her head to cast a shadow over the spotlight. The energy in the room transforms instantly with a mysterious and commanding power as BANKS and her dancers perform a choreographed, ceremonial routine to the haunting opening number ‘Guillotine.’
The sharp, stuttering rhythms of the track set the tone for the performance with a heavy dramatic tension driven by dark tension and emotion. ‘Love Is Unkind’ follows, swelling with a surprisingly tender warmth, before she snaps back to a darker edge with ‘Fuck With Myself’ and crowd erupts as soon as the bassline kicks in.
“I am so honoured to be here. This is one of my favourite cities to play music,” she exclaims.
BANKS’ voice is a dark, smoky, emotionally charged instrument that changes texture to suit each mood. She sings with a rich, velvety lower register that feels intimate and confessional with vulnerability and ghostly harmonies. ‘Gemini Feed’ is an early fan favourite that has the entire audience shouting every line back at her. She continues with tracks from her latest album ‘Off With Her Head’ including ‘Stay’ which offers a pause pulling back into a softness, and ‘Meddle In The Mold’ bringing grit and movement whilst her dancers mirror the track’s jittering pulse with striking precision of hypnotic choreography.
The midsection of the set sees BANKS lean into her more experimental side. ‘Direction,’ with its magnetic beat, has the crowd swaying in unison, while ‘Move’ is delivered with a swagger that reminds everyone just how effortlessly her sound blends dance, poetry, and emotional charge.
BANKS takes a seat at the grand piano on stage before addressing the audience. “I was here one year ago to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of ‘Goddess’. Did anybody come to that show? We love you,” she shouts out. “That was really special when I came here to play songs from that album that I hadn’t played in so long, and I did it completely alone on the stage. It was really empowering and special because I played a few songs acoustically on the piano which is how I first started writing, so I wanted to keep that in the show, tonight,” she tells before continuing with the emotional track ‘Someone New.’
BANKS stays at the piano for ‘Drowning’, performing the first verse acoustically with only the soft resonance of the keys beneath her. Her voice, stripped of production and exposed, fills the theatre with a fragile beauty, only to erupt back into the full arrangement complete with a hard-hitting dance routine halfway through and sending a jolt through the crowd.
The final stretch of the night builds into a crescendo. ‘Delulu’ buzzes with playful chaos, while ‘Contaminated’ drips with moodiness. ‘River’ surges with kinetic energy, followed by the groovy collaboration with Sampha ‘Make It Up, which gets the crowd dancing more freely.
As the opening notes of ‘Waiting Game’ ring out, the entire venue falls into a hush. BANKS floats through the haunting melody with devastating restraint, her voice stretching and collapsing in all right places.
She doesn’t waste time with an encore but delivers a strong back-to-back finale starting with ‘Beggin for Thread’ that turns the room into a thundering chorus as everyone screams the lyrics in unison. She closes with the ferocious, unapologetically venomous ‘I Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend,’ throwing long-stemmed roses at audience before she leaves the stage with a dramatic exit.
Words by Michael Prebeg
