Confounding and fantastic: 100 Gecs, at O2 Forum Kentish Town, reviewed

Let me introduce you to the two poles in pop and rock. One is marked by authenticity, musicianship, a certain traditionalism. This is the pole that in critics’ discourse is called ‘rockism’ – the assumption that rock (or, at least, real people playing real instruments) is the normative state of music. The other is artificiality, brashness, a disdain for heritage – a celebration of everything that is inauthentic, where a good idea is worth 100 guitar lessons. And that pole is known as ‘poptimism’. Poptimism is why you end up with learned essays in the New Yorker analysing the singer Ariana Grande nicking a doughnut from a shop with reference to the work of John Ruskin. (Yes, that really happened.)

The US duo 100 Gecs are firmly at the poptimist pole. Their music fizzes, almost literally. It’s like a packet of sherbert dropped into a bottle of Tizer, possibly with a bomb of MDMA thrown in, too.