Sunday 31st May: 2010, and the last weekend in May sees a major music competition, a multitude of bands descend on one venue and play their hearts out in front of a large, screaming audience in order to gain the votes of a panel of experts, resulting in one being crowned winner with prizes including some high-profile gigs.
No, I'm not talking about Eurovision. That was last night. Tonight is the final of the Fibbers Battle of the Bands contest. To be fair, the two events are fairly similar. Except BotB is a lot smaller than Eurovision, there's less cheese, a lot less Lycra, very little silly dancing, a lot less (I would hope) political voting and an act from the UK has a very good chance of winning.
Oh, yeah, and the music is orders of magnitude better.
As I understand it, bands reach the final through a series of knockout heats and semi-finals, during which it is the audience which votes for the winners. So, the more fans, friends and family members the band brings along, the more chance of progressing. I think one finalist is put through by a judging panel. This year, this method resulted in five very different bands making it through to tonight's final.
Sadly, Kill The Captain had to drop out at short notice. A shame as I'd not heard them before. Some other time maybe.
The running order was decided on the day and first to take to the stage were The Littlemores, a band I had seen and enjoyed earlier this year, despite their music not being to my usual tastes. Ska-like, I stand by my earlier description that they sound like The Jam gone pop. As last time, they were joined on stage by multi-instrumentalist Ben Crosthwaite, who added the accordion to the previously featured trumpet. Ben adds a different dimension and a large degree of originality to the band's songs, which deal largely with aspects of youth and contain a degree of humour. My favourites from tonight's set were For The Lads, which tells the "story" of a young man who ends up joining the BNP, to the disappointment of others and something whose title begins with "O" (I'm writing this a week after the event and can't read my notes...) which featured the aforementioned accordion and some strangely Santana-like guitar-playing. The overall feeling is one of fun and The Littlemores had their large and somewhat vocal support bouncing.
It was all change in the audience as the next band took to the stage and fans of Scarborough boys The Shadracks moved to the front. If the Littlemores embody fun, the more traditionally indie sounding Shadracks could be said to represent cheekiness. There's lots of Cheshire Cat grins and more than one audience-involving gimmick, such as getting a volunteer to play tambourine on stage or keyboard-player Joe running into the audience with a small hand-held keyboard. Sadly, the vocals weren't as clear and the songs a little less memorable, but the set did include a reasonable drum solo (not something you see very often from local bands). It was, however, another very good performance.
Third up were Lost From Atlas and regular (hah!) readers will know that I really like this band. (In fact, they were one of the two reasons I was here tonight.) Unusually, the Atlas boys broke up their set a bit so that Danny could speak although, to be honest, he did look a little uncomfortable doing so and I can't help but wonder whether they thought it was expected of them to engage with the audience a bit. I'm fairly certain that there as some new material in the set which was another excellent one from an outstanding band who were described by tonight's host (Alexander King who, it has to be said, did a particularly good job as compere) as "bewilderingly good".
Finally, and with quite a disparity in age to the rest of tonight's acts, Maybe She's A Clone took to the stage. Described to me as "loud guitar rock", they are listed on the link above as "rock / emo / indie" What is emo anyway?? This was another new band to me, despite knowing one of the members. They follow the twin guitar pattern of one of my favourite local bands but manage to sound very different. Although I thought I detected a little Southern Rock (a la Black Stone Cherry) in the first song, that soon disappeared and the overall impression I was with was something more akin to The Engineers as, even without keyboards, they managed to produce a similar soundscape. Again, the vocals, shared throughout the band, weren't that clear from where I was standing but the riff-driven guitar-playing was superb. Highlight for me was the brilliantly melodic Breathe Again.
And then, after a short deliberation on the part of the judges, the results were announced. Perhaps a little unfairly, the acts were announced from three to one, leaving fourth place somewhat unrecognised. The full order was:
4th: Maybe She's A Clone
3rd: The Shadracks
2nd: Lost From Atlas
1st: The Littlemores -a result which went down well with what seemed to be the majority of the audience.
Personally, I wouldn't have ranked the bands in that order. Based purely on personal taste, Lost From Atlas would have been winners, followed by Maybe She's A Clone, The Littlemores and, finally, The Shadracks.
That's not to take anything from any of the bands - despite two of them not being my "thing", all of them were thoroughly entertaining and, overall, it was a fantastic evening.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Whitley Bay Wildcats
Wednesday 12th May: It's a Wednesday and a band from my past (sort of) has caught my eye, so it's time for a solo trip to Fibbers.
Tonight's support bands seemed to me to be suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. First to take the stage, to somewhat muted applause, were Kiss Kiss Kill, a local band whose overall sound sounded more "punk/pop" than the "alternative rock" they bill themselves as on the above link. The trouble was they appeared just a bit too clean cut to suit the sound, apart from vocalist Grace, who could easily have modelled herself on Debbie Harry. There was quite a high degree of noise distortion through their set and, while the band is relatively new, the individual members' histories should have meant a more polished performance than we saw tonight - songs were introduced before guitars were tuned for them and leads mysteriously parted company from microphones. There was, occasionally, some nice melodic guitar-work trying to prise its way out from behind powerful drumming. Grace's vocals improved from an apparently nervy start and, overall, the set improved as it went on. For me, the best song was Shake Down, although the final song (and Grace's favourite) was the best vocally. Reception to the band remained ambivalent through the set but I suspect they might have got more plaudits on a different bill. There's a germ of a decent band here, they just weren't what most of tonight's gig-goers were looking for.
Raw Deal, on the other hand, sounded more like the classic heavy metal that they bill themselves as, but at least some members of the band adopt a more punk-like image. This was a more polished and energetic performance, although the vocals, by diminutive Steph (a.k.a. Pixie) weren't quite as clear as those of Kiss Kiss Kill, as they were drowned out a little by the guitars. The music did fit the bill a bit more, though and songs such as Catch Me and Godspeed (I think that was the title, anyway) were excellent. Again, there was good, if over loud, use of guitar and, for a change, the drumming wasn't too intrusive.
I was a mere youngster, still at school, when the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal was at its peak. I don't remember hearing anything by Tygers of Pan Tang, although I'm fairly certain that at least one of my friends had one of their albums, but the name has stayed with through the intervening years. (Indeed, I was suddenly reminded of them last year, when I read Michael Moorcock's Elric Stories while on holiday - the band took their name from a group of chaos-worshipping warriors in said stories.) The band,originally from Whitley Bay, have now been going for over thirty years and the current line-up boasts just one original member (Robb Weir on guitar) and a singer from Italy in the form of Jacopo Meille. Apart from those two members, the rest only date back to the 2000 reformation instigated by Weir. They play exactly what it says on the tin - heavy metal in the classic late 70's, 80's style and, while the set featured songs from the latest album, Animal Instinct, a lot of material was taken from Wild Cat and Spellbound, the band's first two albums. Screaming guitar solos, guitar duets, the audience being "machine-gunned" by guitars and microphone stand and Meille's fantastically powerful and rangy voice, transported me back to a time when my gig venues were the likes of Queen's Hall in Leeds. (Sadly, Ronnie James Dio, whose band was either the second or third I ever saw at that venue, lost his battle with cancer this week.)
I didn't recognise any of the songs until the encore, which started with Love Potion Number 9. It might be a cover version but my fading memory also thinks that it might be the Tygers' most famous song. (A bit of personal trivia - this set also included, albeit briefly, the first "talk box" I have ever seen used.) The band's member might be getting on a bit now, even if they weren't there from the beginning, but they certainly put out a superb set and put on a fantastic show.
Tonight's support bands seemed to me to be suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. First to take the stage, to somewhat muted applause, were Kiss Kiss Kill, a local band whose overall sound sounded more "punk/pop" than the "alternative rock" they bill themselves as on the above link. The trouble was they appeared just a bit too clean cut to suit the sound, apart from vocalist Grace, who could easily have modelled herself on Debbie Harry. There was quite a high degree of noise distortion through their set and, while the band is relatively new, the individual members' histories should have meant a more polished performance than we saw tonight - songs were introduced before guitars were tuned for them and leads mysteriously parted company from microphones. There was, occasionally, some nice melodic guitar-work trying to prise its way out from behind powerful drumming. Grace's vocals improved from an apparently nervy start and, overall, the set improved as it went on. For me, the best song was Shake Down, although the final song (and Grace's favourite) was the best vocally. Reception to the band remained ambivalent through the set but I suspect they might have got more plaudits on a different bill. There's a germ of a decent band here, they just weren't what most of tonight's gig-goers were looking for.
Raw Deal, on the other hand, sounded more like the classic heavy metal that they bill themselves as, but at least some members of the band adopt a more punk-like image. This was a more polished and energetic performance, although the vocals, by diminutive Steph (a.k.a. Pixie) weren't quite as clear as those of Kiss Kiss Kill, as they were drowned out a little by the guitars. The music did fit the bill a bit more, though and songs such as Catch Me and Godspeed (I think that was the title, anyway) were excellent. Again, there was good, if over loud, use of guitar and, for a change, the drumming wasn't too intrusive.
I was a mere youngster, still at school, when the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal was at its peak. I don't remember hearing anything by Tygers of Pan Tang, although I'm fairly certain that at least one of my friends had one of their albums, but the name has stayed with through the intervening years. (Indeed, I was suddenly reminded of them last year, when I read Michael Moorcock's Elric Stories while on holiday - the band took their name from a group of chaos-worshipping warriors in said stories.) The band,originally from Whitley Bay, have now been going for over thirty years and the current line-up boasts just one original member (Robb Weir on guitar) and a singer from Italy in the form of Jacopo Meille. Apart from those two members, the rest only date back to the 2000 reformation instigated by Weir. They play exactly what it says on the tin - heavy metal in the classic late 70's, 80's style and, while the set featured songs from the latest album, Animal Instinct, a lot of material was taken from Wild Cat and Spellbound, the band's first two albums. Screaming guitar solos, guitar duets, the audience being "machine-gunned" by guitars and microphone stand and Meille's fantastically powerful and rangy voice, transported me back to a time when my gig venues were the likes of Queen's Hall in Leeds. (Sadly, Ronnie James Dio, whose band was either the second or third I ever saw at that venue, lost his battle with cancer this week.)
I didn't recognise any of the songs until the encore, which started with Love Potion Number 9. It might be a cover version but my fading memory also thinks that it might be the Tygers' most famous song. (A bit of personal trivia - this set also included, albeit briefly, the first "talk box" I have ever seen used.) The band's member might be getting on a bit now, even if they weren't there from the beginning, but they certainly put out a superb set and put on a fantastic show.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
CD Review: The Reasoning - Adverse Camber
Tuesday 4th May: By now a lot of fans of The Reasoning will have already picked up their copy of the band's third album, Adverse Camber, which was available to buy on the tour before the general release date of yesterday. In fact, the original pressing of 3,000 has already sold out (but worry not, more are on their way.) I picked mine up at the York gig and it's been in and out of various CD players since.First, a word about the cover, which is a radical departure from the artwork covers of the first two albums. While it doesn't scream "prog!" at you, something about it does remind me of Storm Thorgerson's work for Pink Floyd. I'm not sure what it is about it as, being honest, it looks nothing like any particular Floyd cover - maybe it's the slight surrealism in the background pictures - but from the first time I saw it, that was the thought that has popped into my head.
Adverse Camber is not as dark as the previous album, Dark Angel, or, even Awakening, the band's debut. It does, however, retain some of the heaviness which marks The Reasoning as a little different from most female-fronted prog bands. The lighter tone may have something to do with Dylan Thompson seeming to take more of a back stage in terms of vocals, allowing Rachel Cohen's almost choral vocals to be front and centre for almost the entire album, with Dylan really only sharing lead vocals with Rachel on Through The Now, which actually ends up being more of a triple-header as new backing vocalist Maria Owen also gets a chance to shine during parts of the song. (Not that she doesn't shine as a backing vocalist - in fact, along with Dylan, she provides some of the best backing vocals I can remember hearing, both on the album and during the live set.)
Musically, a lot of the album seems not to be made up of full tunes, but snatches of music which ebb and flow around the vocals, never allowing the listener to get bored or to guess what form the songs are going to take. The music on the album varies between the neo-classical, with the piano opening to Script Switch Trigger, and some very heavy metal-like guitar solos. The overall effect, when mixing the vocals and the music is something that hovers just to the light side of the mid point between traditional prog rock and the likes of Evanescence.
Highlights for me are the Eastern influenced keyboards and choppy guitars of The Thirteenth Floor and the aforementioned, ballad-like, Script Switch Trigger, my favourite song on the album, which showcases Rachel's crystal clear enunciation. (Apparently the title comes from a theory of humour but I didn't follow Rachel's explanation from the stage and have just been more confused by internet searches...) The Nobody Effect, contains the album's heaviest guitar work overlaid with some subtle keyboards but I'm afraid I am unable to listen to the chorus without being reminded of Genesis' Driving The Last Spike.
Adverse Camber is a well-above average album and, like its cover, is definitely a bit of a departure from the band's previous output. However, while there's nothing actually wrong with the album, I still find myself preferring Awakening.
Track listing:
1. Diamonds And Leather
2. The Nobody Effect
3. The Thirteenth Floor
4. Through The Now
5. Script Switch Trigger
6. 14
Musicians:
Rachel Cohen - Vocals & Percussion
Dylan Thompson - Vocals, Electric/Acoustic Guitars & Mandolin
Matthew Cohen - Bass Guitar, Backing Vocals, Mandolin & Percussion
Maria Owen - Vocals
Tony Turrell - Keyboards & Backing Vocals
Owain Roberts - Electric Guitar
Jake Bradford-Sharp - Drums & Percussion
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