Mirrors @ The Lexington, London

Is there a more aptly name band on earth than Mirrors? Conjuring up the iconography of a trashy backwater town club in the 80s, you could imagine disco/post-punk/synthpop would be on the jukebox; where big hair and make-up make for the entry fee (girls and boys).

Tonight, The Lexington is miles away from this imagined world. The crowd is quiet and lack-lustre - it’s a Tuesday night and most of the crowd are here on work. It’s a room that should be asking, “can we take another year of musical revisionism?”

There’s a disillusionment towards today’s politics which far exceeds that of the 80s, so it’s no surprise that hyper-chilling synthpop, reminiscent of this retro ideology, would return in spades. But if Delphic and The Human League were born out of the twilight (OMG Robert Pattinson!) years of Labour, then it is only right that the new Conservative rule would explode the revival (just as it aggrandised under Thatcher). However, today we are so apathetic towards the new, consciously knowing that it’s just the old re-formatted; can we suffer another band of this ilk?

Mirrors are all-too aware of this. This cold, unembellished, approach to nostalgia permeates both performance and music. In the lyrics, presented as if the singer was wailing into a void – ecstatically charged – whilst the drummer retains the composure of one revered German synthesizer group.

This non-committal venture into retro sounds does well to capture the fragmented Britain of 2010. One can only expect that by the time we hit the dreaded ‘double dip’, our outlook on the future will be so in line with this bleak pop, that Mirrors will be ma-hoosive.

When their ‘moment’ comes (ETA May 2011), will we be so driven to seek out a new, that we will bury this eternal revisionism and try to create our own future?