Thursday night at the Corner Hotel is a playground for a gamut of school night trepidations, the stalwart music venue seeming casually empty as the audience - at first, primarily male, hooded and calculatedly disaffected, trickles in.

These lonely neuroses are shattered abruptly as the opening band, Miniature Submarines, strike their first chord. A solid four-piece, they start with an icy bravado that hides their nerves. This restraint gives a little, drink by drink, song by song, but you can't help feel they're not entirely comfortable. The crowd swells but they don't quite engage. As for the sound, it wavers between too-dry indie-rock moments that cross into faux-country melody and a wall of post-rock noise that I and the audience relate somewhat better to. Their musicianship is unquestionable, and their sound occasionally erupts into moments of tremendous, powerful feedback with enough harmonic overtone to carry a listener into the more blissful end of the frequency spectrum, but you can't help but feel that Miniature Submarines haven't just yet found the best way to approach their audience, or a stylistic focus and direction for their music.

Next are Baadd, comprised of one half of irreverent electro-punk act Toxic Lipstick, a co-vocalist and a laptop. It would be all too easy to be sidetracked with comparisons to other female-fronted electronic acts and their feminist significance, but that'd be drawing a very long bow, and I'm rather accident prone. Ultimately, they polarise the audience almost immediately in a way that I delight in. There are audible groans from some audience members as they trundle from centre floor. Others try to hold back their smiles as a backing track delivers a jittery assault of low-bit bleeps and cutting percussion as the two vocalists gauchely scream into a cloud of fuzz and echo. Ever energetic and topical - with lyrics about defecation, owls and Viking metal (replete with growling voices over sampled solo licks) - Baadd raise spirits at the Corner, one way or another.

Finally, Health. I must admit curmudgeonly reservation by now. I'm familiar with a handful of electro-pop remixes, including the Crimewave remix of Crystal Castles that drew so much interest to the band in recent years. What blossoms in front of me is nothing so fey, but it retains its melody by suggestion in every ringing note. Air is pushed forward dramatically by guitars and bass courtesy of John, Jupiter and vocalist Jake with palpable electricity. A storm of kicks and snares are laid down by bearlike drummer BJ, clouds gathering and then breaking into metronomic, hard rain with a sense of timing and power. During Triceratops, gentle vocals soar towards the ceiling with strained melancholy, and then break into low growls. All of these elements arc around one another like phantoms set to sampled loops of mechanical noise before settling into moments of serene power.
Die Slow opens with chopping, inexorable movement – combining the hard, uncompromising rhythmic elements around which snakes a sweeter smoke, pushing itself through vocal chords and guitar amps and becoming more heady and tainted for it.

Revisiting Health's recorded music, hi-fi coats their sound with a certain modest, whereas onstage they are harsh and brutal, but steeped in hypnotic nectar, constantly moving, actively buzzing. This is a band that exceeds the framework of live performance, and imbues it with a range of emotions and an innate conviction and focus. With percussive elements that suggest everything from fattened, tribal surf rock to industrial, and vocals that echo with the atmosphere of shoegazer and the purpose of punk, their live performance solidifies an unerring identity. Highly recommended.

Written by James Ryan
Photograph by Phizz