#genuflex

From the 2014 The Last Gods EP, released digitally on Dave Sitek’s Federal Prism. Dem industrial influences really showing. Visuals on point. Énorme, as one Youtube commenter put it. 

Absolute favorite off the Bludevotion EP (2011), a Rite of Spring invocation. And what a name for a song. Naming game very strong. 

This is the sort of subdued cohesive aesthetic that would have suited WRM. And look—another swan. A bit of a recurring gestalt, that. 

The self-titled full length came out in 2016, almost six years after that first live appearance. Again, I defer to the critics for breathless epithets and flattering comparisons. 

Only five of the nine tracks on it are brand new, and it took me a while to get into them, same as before. If WRM’s music was written in a dialect of primordial angelspeak I recognized instantly from god knows where/when, Genuflex can take time to translate. Once you do, you can always rely on it for all your sublime needs. 

Out of all art forms, my strongest empathic response is reserved for dancers and vocalists. I often stagger out of dance shows exhausted, and there are several voices, Finn’s being one, that make me feel like the sound is resonating in my own chest and escaping through my throat. The nadir of “Black Sail” at 3:00 can be a bit too much, for this reason. Other highlights include “Satantango” with its shockingly generic intro that nevertheless goes somewhere entirely new, and “Heart & Soul,“ the only straight dance track on the record. 

Here is why it’s hard for me to resist copypasting entire Genuflex reviews: they are my vindication. The first half of this OWOB was powered almost entirely by a long-held childish grudge against anyone who had ever covered WRM and failed to wax poetic about them.

With Genuflex, all anyone ever does is wax poetic: that gig reviewer, the publishing company, this interviewer, this interviewer. “Divine,” “bold,” “artful,” “beguilingly emotive,” “idiosyncratic brilliance.” Well GOOD. We finally meet in the middle.

Genuflex Twin Peaks Roadhouse Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, London Thursday March 8 2012

They appear, play a gig, vanish again.

I don’t know if this elusiveness is intentional - part of some grand strategy to intrigue us - or if main man Finn Vine just doesn’t fancy getting on the showbiz treadmill again after giving it the full rock ‘n’ roll go-around with his previous band, White Rose Movement.

But anyway, here we are at the dear old Hoxton Square Bar And Kitchen again (you decide if the ‘dear old’ is ironic or not) to catch Genuflex in one of their rare heads-above-the-parapet moments.

It’s quickly apparent that Finn Vine has been using those mysterious gaps between Genuflex sightings to refine and develop the band. Because this isn’t the Genuflex I first saw, five months ago and a hundred yards away at the Underbelly. Then, Genuflex were all fuzzy at the edges, as if glimpsed through morning mist. Finn’s vocals were a Roy Orbison croon, and the whole show had the air of a lament for a doomed romance.

Well, things have toughened up a bit since then. Tonight Genuflex hit harder, move faster. The music is loaded wih electronic pulses, thrumming and rattling, basslines rumbling in the undercarriage.

Finn himself, hunched over a spotlight, sends slices of reverbed guitar skidding into the rhythms, and lets loose a vocal that still retains his Roy Orbison-esque tinge of rock ‘n’ roll romance - but now the big O is in overdrive. It’s a bigger, badder version of Genuflex that we’re seeing tonight. Even the atmospheric interludes (and Genuflex do atmospheric interludes better than anyone) have a gimlet-eyed sense of purpose to them.

In a way, this incarnation of Genuflex reminds me of Simple Minds - no, don’t scream in horror, Simple Minds were not always the staid stadium-AOR merchants we know and revile today. In their early days the band were a much more robust propopsition, marrying a certain swooning drama to purposeful post-punk. That’s the area Genuflex seem to be intent on invading - and why not, Simple Minds vacated it years ago.

Finn’s vocal, haunted yet intent, plunges and ascends through the barrelling beat-and-hum of the music, seeming to urge everything forward. Yes, that’s the reinvented Genuflex - speeding up, moving ahead.

Now this, this I could get into. The video I linked above is just a snippet, but it’s a good representation of what WRM were like live. Oh and btw, that is Owen, and Poppy, and Ed, all back together with the exception of Jasper. Also Tree Carr, off and on. 

Fan foraging expeditions sometimes yielded surprising results. “Guys am I going crazy or does this sound like Finn? Who the fuck is Spring69?! Ahhh omg,” etc etc. It’s a pretty sweet track, very Interpol, very atmospheric.  

Genuflex Underbelly, London Friday November 26 2010

Well, someone’s certainly got the blues tonight. The stage at the Underbelly - one of those Hoxton basements that’s cool, but probably not quite as cool as it thinks it is - is entirely bathed in blue light. It’s like, how much more blue could the light be? And the answer is none. None more blue.

I don’t know if this is intentional - some sort of conceptual aesthetic on the part of the band; after all, they do have a song called ‘Blue Devotion’ - or just because nobody’s tweaked the faders on the lighting desk. Either way it suits Genuflex, for there’s a certain austere introspection to this band. A touch of the blues fits them very well.

Genuflex are a new outfit, tentatively taking their first gig-steps. But the band’s main man is no tyro. On vocals and guitar, standing at the mic looking severe but slightly haunted, is Finn Vine, ex-White Rose Movement, a band which foundered on the rocks of their difficult second album a while back. Genuflex are something of a tangent to the past, for the post-punk punch of White Rose Movement has been replaced by something rather more spectral.

Genuflex’s songs are haunted ballads, hymns from after dark. The band generates an unearthly thrum. There are no rock ‘n’ roll histrionics, but there’s certainly an understated power to the music, and a downtempo fuzz and grind that recalls the Jesus And Mary Chain at their most existentially romantic. Finn Vine sings in a spooked croon. It’s as if he’s chanelling Roy Orbison fuzzily through the ether: the music has jagged edges, but those edges are spun with sonic fog. Genuflex eschew the hackneyed effects of rock 'n’ roll - there’s nothing so obvious as a smoke machine on stage - but even so, it’s as if the songs are coming at us through smoke, fuzzy and indistinct until they crystallise into things of blue cut-glass before our ears.

And yes, 'Blue Devotion’ makes perfect sense in this setting. Understated they may be, but Genuflex make an impact.