SUPERORGANISM, BILLIE EILISH, Jazz Cafe – Evening Standard, 16 Feb 2018

In a sad week it felt good to be at a concert whose theme seemed to be the triumph of youth. DJ Annie Mac’s AMP Sounds series of London shows, going on in Camden throughout February, here brought together two acts who really ought to have been in bed earlier on a school night.

Billie Eilish, just turned 16, was over from LA. She performed before Superorganism, a heavily populated Hackney collective led by Orono, a baby-faced Japanese girl small enough to put in your pocket. Both were fun, cheeky and offered a much needed dose of escapism.

Eilish, joined by her older brother Finneas on acoustic guitar and keyboards, was a little darker. Her standout song, Bellyache, is a woozy pop song about murdering all your friends, after all. But she also covered Drake’s Hotline Bling on the ukulele, relieved Finneas from instrumental duties for the occasional dance routine, and gave her song Copycat a fabulous false ending with the cry, “Psyche!” Full maturity is a way off but she’s a star right now.

Superorganism are one of those bands who existed on the internet before they ventured into real life, not least because some of them are from Australia and New Zealand. In real life they were sickly sweet and hilarious, coming on in multicoloured fisherman’s macs with glitter on their cheeks, ringing bells, waving tambourines covered in ribbons and generally being very silly.

Orono’s slightly bored singing voice was strangely suited to the novelty of the music, all throbbing bass sounds and kooky samples. She donned sunglasses for Everybody Wants To Be Famous and apologised for being so short and invisible. Meanwhile the backing singers did the backstroke and shrimps tumbled down the video screens. Get this lot in front of a load of incapacitated people in a key afternoon festival slot. They could win the summer.