How To Dress Well LIVE @ 100 Club, Oxford Street 23.4.14

The doors open at 7.30pm tonight, it’s only 7.20pm but the queue for The 100 Club is already halfway down Tottenham Court Road. How To Dress Well is playing a free gig put on by Converse at The 100 Club with a random ballot deciding on who gets to attend. Ashamedly predictable, the crowd appear to have donned an unintentional common uniform of Converse high-tops, myself included.

The 100 Club walls are dotted with pictures of past performances from The Clash to The Rolling Stones to the legend that was Bo Diddley. Glaswegian dance act Koreless graces the stage first with a solid support act before the headliner How To Dress Well appears.

Greeted with ‘oi oi’ from the crowd Tom Krell is all smiles, pulling in his two microphones he begins the set, the light from his visuals falling like a mask across his eyes. Eyes which soon tightly close, he moves from side to side, in a seemingly transcended performance all of his own.

As a false fire alarm breaks the set up, we all evacuate the club and stand in the rain whilst firefighters walk in and, almost immediately, out of the venue. Colder but not discouraged the crowd hurry back down the stairs, the atmosphere unbroken as soon as the haunting vocals of Krell begin again. The deeply sad ‘Suicide Dream 1’, which he tells us he wrote for a friend, silences the room as the audience look on mesmerised.

How To Dress Well performs two new tracks, ‘Repeat Pleasure’ followed by ‘Words I Don’t Remember’ taken from his much anticipated third album ‘What Is This Heart?’, set for release on June 23^rd. He finishes off the set with ‘Set It Right’, a song he has described as “the biggest song I’ve ever written”, his vocals push through layers of noise in a crescendo of aching emotion as he sings “Jamie, I miss ya; Mama, I miss ya; and Dad, I miss ya…”

This is the third time I’ve seen How To Dress Well live and it won’t be the last. I’m completely addicted to Krell’s falsetto vocals that pour out over his intelligently produced tracks. In a complete league of his own, this philosophy graduate who claims influences such as Mariah Carey is absolutely outstanding. To label How To Dress Well as ‘Indie R&B’ would do his music no justice, as heavy beats pulsate around the underground room, it becomes clear that Krell has created a brand of music which is very much his own.

Words: Tash Walker

Photos: Andrew Whitton

How To Dress Well performed at the 100 Club as part of the Converse Gigs @ 100 Club series. For more information on Converse Gigs, go to Converse.co.uk