Live review: Poppy, Bristol Electric

“Welcome to the House Of Poppy,” booms a disembodied voice on the stroke of 9pm. The story goes that in here, “every face in this room is a mirror, every sound a pulse in infinite space” and this nightclub “remembers everyone who has ever walked through its doors”. It’s less romantic than this Disney-like narrative sounds. “It knows what you try to hide.”

This layer of theatre couldn’t befit anyone from our world better, someone known as a chameleonic figure shifting through eras and sounds behind a veil of mystery with only glimmers of transparency. Being an enigma sells well nowadays (hello Sleep Token, hello PRESIDENT), but Poppy never does anything to ride a wave – and neither is it the reason she’s reached such an ascendancy. She built this with immaculate songwriting, and now, it’s time for her to light a match with those songs live.

Intriguingly, she sits atop an oddly nu metal-heavy bill, starting with the testosterone-fuelled Fox Lake. “All-American muscle from the USA!” boasts vocalist Nathan Johnson as their chunky riffs curl and flex beneath him, with such a strong whiff of ‘bro’ you can practically smell beer and sweaty T-shirts (but they still declare “Free Palestine and fuck Trump”). Nonetheless, they’re determined, they sizzle with energy, and they sure do sound sharp.

Ocean Grove – or Ocean Loathe, shall we say, with the Liverpool metallers’ Feisal El-Khazragi filling in on guitar – take a little longer to find their groove. Once the blood gets pumping and the hooks get bigger, as on the sun-soaked Ask For The Anthem and the whirling, melodic Raindrop, they become the party-starting chaos-makers they always wanted to be. Then again, ending on a song as muscular as Fly Away makes them pass with flying colours all on their own, the crowd jumping along after they decide they quite like these raucous Aussies.

The logic of this unusual bill becomes clearer once Poppy arrives, in a big, puffy bridal-like dress behind a glittery microphone stand. By comparison, she seems even more singular. At times, like in the arcing chorus of Bruised Sky, she brings grace to contrast the aggression of the music around her. At others, like on the seething, stomping verses of BLOODMONEY, she’s a transfixing figure of rage.

Even when she appears delicate and unassuming, her power is even more effective. There’s strength in contrast, and she’s always embodied that, slipping from a demure Southern drawl – “Every day they give me a list of things I am not supposed to do up here…” she wonders – into a lacerating roar. “I wanna see you go absolutely feral… Can you do that?” Then she tears into the center’s falling out, and she gets what she wants.

Some of the strongest moments here, meanwhile, occur when the songs take on a new life beyond the slickness on record. Crystallised gains a little extra sparkle live with the more organic touch of live guitar, as does Time Will Tell, and it even befits the dystopian shudder of Bad Omens collaboration V.A.N. The moments where she goes for the jugular feel even fiercer, like the bark of ‘Coward!’ that kickstarts they’re all around us. No wonder the chant of “Poppy! Poppy!” when the house lights drop are so loud, before she returns to bring the night to a blazing end with new way out.

Poppy’s always written her distinctiveness large, but the live show is where that gets magnified. Every side of her gets to shine – she gets to be heavy and soft, aggressive and feminine, controlled and unhinged. She dances in the overlap, and she knows that makes her special.

Get your Poppy x Kerrang! limited-edition 20-page zine.

Read this next:

• Poppy: “Every day I wake up, I want to push myself to do something that I haven’t done the day before”
• Poppy: “I haven’t really found my place. I’m an explorer, but I don’t feel like I’ve fully arrived”
• Poppy: “People are always trying to get ahead as opposed to living, it takes a lot of work to fight to be in the present”