Jungle’s show begins as more gigs should: with a terrifyingly poised eight-year-old breakdancer spinning on her head, effortlessly eclipsing the adult musicians behind her. Having four-foot-tall B-Girl Terra on stage during the opening Platoon – she also appears in its video – means that Jungle risk peaking during the first six minutes of their set, but she’s emblematic of their party-time inclusiveness.
The west London band’s core duo, Tom McFarland and Josh Lloyd-Watson, aren’t the stars of this show, though they’re at the front, generating keyboard samples and harmonising in slick falsettos. Jungle are a co-operative, and tonight’s funk-soul bliss-out involves the labour of singers, guitarists, percussionists and a soul-revival brass section as sharp as the Dap Kings.
Together, they throw so much stuff at each song that the music shouldn’t cohere – but they deftly locate the nexus where soulful hookiness, rolling grooves and ravey euphoria (they’re partial to sirens and strobes) coalesce into something highly potent.
The live version of Julia sounds like a street-corner sound system blowing a gasket, though the melodic thread is never lost. The Heat sheds the Daft Punk intricacy of its recorded version and becomes a torrid city-street chant-along. Best of all, the trombone, neglected by dance-funk since Groove Armada’s pomp, blasts through Busy Earnin’ like the first ominous notes of a crime-thriller soundtrack.
McFarland, who offers an overwhelmed “thank you so much” after every number, takes lead vocals on Drops, and brings to mind Plan B as he might sound if life had been an easier ride: McFarland has the sweetness, but there are no hood-instilled life lessons to derail the party. And a party is what this is: in the balcony, a woman who’s been stopped by a guard from dancing is so angry that she mouths an unmistakeable two-word reply.
At Parklife Weekender, Manchester, 7 June. At Glastonbury festival, 26 June.
