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WOODSTOCK, Ga. — If British synth-pop and new wave ever crossed your life — through MTV, a John Hughes movie or a Cameron Crowe soundtrack somewhere in the 1980s and into the ’90s — LIPS LIKE SUGAR is the band that will put you back inside that moment. And if you didn’t grow up with it, a night with this band explains exactly why those songs are still getting played today.
The six-piece act, built around the deeper catalog of Duran Duran’s era — Depeche Mode, and the rest of the British synth-pop and new wave scene that MTV carried into American culture — headlined Thursday night at MadLife Stage & Studios with a wall of synchronized video behind them, side screens flanking the stage, and every beat synced to the music. The songs did the work of memory. The production did the work of transporting you there.
It was only the second time the band has headlined a full night under its own name, and for keyboardist Howard Flint, that production wasn’t optional. It was the whole pitch.
“It’s now high production, multimedia,” Flint said. “That’s the angle that we’re going for. That’s the new trend that is taking hold.”
Flint said that shift is being driven as much by venues as by bands. Cities across North Atlanta have poured money into amphitheaters and stages built with video walls to compete for national touring acts, he said, and those acts increasingly demand the technology as a condition of booking.
“Videos are part of our show now,” Flint said, describing the expectation touring artists bring to a venue. “That’s downward pressure on them, that’s helping us.” As more rooms install permanent screens to land bigger names, he said, they’ll be looking for local and regional bands that can already deliver a synchronized video-and-music show — not just a set list.
LIPS LIKE SUGAR grew out of The Reflex, the band’s Duran Duran tribute act that Howard and Eric Vassy met the others through an online musician service, Bandmix, in 2022. The Reflex debuted in April 2023 and built a following on the same premise: fans wanted more than a note-for-note cover set; they wanted the visual experience that made Duran Duran and its MTV-era peers famous in the first place.
“Once that was out there, we just kept hearing from people like, ‘Oh, we love Duran Duran. Too bad you don’t play Depeche Mode. Too bad you don’t play all these other British bands of the same catalog,'” Flint said. LIPS LIKE SUGAR was his answer — a second act built to widen the aperture beyond one band, without turning into a generic decade-spanning cover show.
The business logic behind the multimedia push is blunt: audiences paying $20 to $30 a ticket expect more than they’d get from a bar cover band working for a few hundred dollars a night.
“You’re supposed to like cover bands, which is what I’ve always been — playing bars, and you hope people show up,” Flint said. “This is theaters, festivals. People are selling tickets. If people are going to spend 20 to 30 bucks for a ticket, you want to deliver something. Plus, Duran Duran is thought of as a high-production band.”
That production was on full display at MadLife, one of the few North Atlanta venues built with a large screen behind the stage and matching side screens — the kind of setup that used to belong only to record-label acts. At rooms without a built-in video wall, Flint said, the band hauls in its own 55-inch televisions instead.
Flint runs the video side of the operation largely himself, pulling stage footage shot by his daughter Piper Flint and the drummer’s wife, and “borrowing” footage from certain movies these songs soundtrack, into Canva to sync against the band’s in-ear click tracks.
Every member of the six-piece band lives in the North Atlanta area — Roswell, Marietta, East Cobb, near Truist Field and Martins Landing among them — a detail Flint said reflects how the group came together more than any deliberate plan. Most had logged years, in some cases decades, in other bands before this one.
Flint estimated that only 15 to 20 percent of tribute acts attempt what LIPS LIKE SUGAR and The Reflex do with synchronized multimedia, pointing to acts such as Guardians of the Jukebox as the standard-bearer in the space. He said the tools — Canva, affordable video walls, cheaper production technology — have only recently made the approach realistic for bands operating outside major label budgets.
“I think that takes it to a whole different kind of group,” Flint said, “because a large number of people who go and enjoy the music, but the visuals reinforce it at a different level.”
Thursday’s show followed the band’s first standalone LIPS LIKE SUGAR performance in Asheville, N.C., in February; the act has otherwise served as a 45-minute opener before a costume change into full Reflex sets at venues including House of Blues Orlando. The band heads to Charlotte, N.C., this weekend for its third headline date.
For me, the highlight was hearing the band’s rendition of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” The audience participation during that song was especially strong, with people clearly connecting with a song that has found a new generation of fans while still carrying the memories of the 1980s for those who were there the first time around. Honestly, I loved everything they did. The music, the videos and the energy of the performance transported me right back to the ’80s — exactly what a good tribute show should do.
Flint said the calculation extends beyond any single show. North Atlanta has gone from just a few live-music venues 20 years ago to nearly 30 today, he said, as cities have built amphitheaters to compete for national touring acts — venues that increasingly require video walls to book bigger names, and that trickle down to benefit tribute acts willing to match that production value.
“People are wanting experiences,” Flint said. “The experience has to be — the more you can take it up a notch where it’s not just singing, but the whole visual experience with that.”
