Chris DeLine

It’s not often that a band plays its set exclusively for one particular person at a show. One person crammed in amongst the rest of an over-sold audience. One person amongst many in the humid, low-ceiling showcase of The Entry. That and it’s hard to honestly believe that the now mythical band from the UK, Klaxons, touted as rock’s missing link by its native media outlets, was playing song after song just for me. Seems strange and somewhat unbelievable, but believe it. I was there.

True. It could be said that as the band has essentially released a mere handful of EPs, much of which were included in the release of this year’s Myths of a Near Future, it would be rather likely to hear most every song on the night’s wish list. Those people would be wrong in this case, because in between planets aligning, tides rising and babies being born—the band played for me.

Shortly following the exhausting two-hour session from local hype machine DJ SovietPanda, the band tapped into the set that utilized much of one of this year’s most energetic releases.

And so it began, “Atlantis to Interzone,” “Totem on the Timeline,” “Golden Skans,” “Two Receivers,” “Gravitys Rainbow” and “It’s Not Over Yet” were all covered, amongst a selection of others. The songs that previously overwhelmed the band’s latest release, however, such as the new rave archetype “Atlantis,” failed to capture the entire crowd in the same fashion as some of the album’s non-singles. Further dividing thought as to what characterizes the band’s strengths was the performance of “It’s Not Over Yet,” with its synth-welding exterior, which seemed to overtake the crowd in a way that the band’s singles never did. Shutting down the set with “Four Horsemen of 2012,” the mighty Klaxons shed its swank exterior and broke a smile, uniting the sweaty 18-plus crowd that had knitted itself closely around the small stage throughout the course of the show.

Whether or not a band is actually playing for one person or a rolling meadow full of festival attendees is somewhat meaningless. Because while singing the memorized lyrics and mumbling the way through those only known phonetically, no one in the world can argue that the band is not playing for you. And for a band that has attracted such a vast audience of listeners across the Atlantic to play in front of some 200 fans, there can be no better show than the show they play exclusively for you. Or, in this case, me.

[This article first appeared on How Was The Show.]