By Hana Sakurai Wernham, Second Year, English
It is a truth self-evident (but all too often denied) that the main point of being in a band is to look cool. So thank God Baby Berserk are here to be honest about this motivation; the first thing you notice about the three-piece is the way they look.
Frontwoman Lieselot Elzinga has highlighter yellow hair in a 60s updo, juxtaposed by a cuttingly sharp hime fringe. She wears a red sparkly mini dress with puffed shoulders and a huge bow on the chest, and red heeled sparkly slingbacks to match. Producer, guitarist and button pusher Mano Hollestelle is clad in a red leather jacket and black beret. Eva Wijnbergen (keys, cymbal, drum machine, etc) has the fiercest black fringed lob you have ever seen and wears a red sequined mini dress with fishnets and heels adorned with spiky black pompoms. On stage they are a perfectly coordinated panelled triptych.
Elzinga’s movements are excellently choreographed. Hip jerks and hand flicks are the perfect visual accompaniments to her post-punkish drawl, which is interspersed with aloof oohs, aahs and uuhs. She even manages to make a bundled-up orange extension lead look like a chic accessory. When the drawl grows to a more frenetic shouting and she begins wrapping herself up in the lead and swinging the mic around, she looks like she might start strangling herself. But my fear at her imminent strangulation is assuaged by the fact that this danger is also somehow fashionable…
Is six times too many for a performer to dismount the stage and come into the crowd? Elzinga doesn’t think so. Audience interaction is a lot and often – when Elzinga tells us to come closer, make some noise, jump, move, dance, her requests function less as encouragement and more as demands. Perhaps they are more appropriately rendered in caps – ‘NOW COME ON, JUMP!’ she instructs in a shout. Enchanted and scared, we obey.
‘Accessories’ is one of the few songs that has a lyrical refrain incessant enough to be heard through the deafening bass and thrumming drum machine. Fans and new listeners alike join its collective affirmation ‘I’m feeling good, I’m feeling fine, I’m feeling quite divine’.
Amidst our collective enchantment, it is hard to tear your eyes away from the charismatic Elzinga whose movements are increasingly furious as the set progresses. But a glance to Wijnbergen reminds you that the rhythm section is holding it down casually as ever – at one particularly high-energy section, she twirls her hair and looks away as if in line at the post office. Hollestelle is similarly cool, looking like an aloof Man-Machine.
Hannah Roberts
When I try to get the setlist at the end of the show (an endeavour which failed because remarkably the band was playing from memory) I have to hide the fact I am sweating from dancing. Who knew you could get your clubbing fill at a free gig on a Sunday evening?
Featured image: Epigram / Hana Sakurai WernhamHave you ever been to a free gig at The Lanes?
