The weather is fine outside, but before long the first band are onstage.
The Mai 68s
Guitar solos like a rusty stanley knife blade, like on the ground near the bins outside a factory, in the rain. Thunderous guitar and bass, with standy up drumer and slightly bewildered looking singing girl in a stripey top, wearing beret and drinking glasses of red wine.
Ithink I saw them play at The Betsy Trotwood a few months ago. They suit the raised stage that this venue offers and they seem to improved their game. The recorded version of Froth on the Daydream doesn't do justice to its sheer power when played live, it'll make you take a step and a half backwards and wish you'd got wine instead of a Jack Daniels and coke.
Even for the first band of the Twee As Fuck alldayer, the place is filling up and there's friendly banter between the stage and the folk at the front.
Neat set-closing song with members leaving the stage incrementally so all that's left is the guitar chap on his knees, tweaking the dials on his effects pedals to turn up the squelch on the thunder.
The Margarets, they're very young, no drummer, just a portable CD player, the ipod broke, I can empathise. The first number was an instrumental, from where I was stood it sounded a bit New Orderish, especially in the bass end of the scale.
The Margarets
There was a bit of the Swedish jangle pop about them.
CD player cocked up their last song so they had to abandon it halfway through which would have ended the set on a sour note if it wasn't for Camila (from Weepop and Your Heart Still Breaks) demanding they finish the song again without any backing. It caught them off guard a wee bit, but ended up sounding kind of sweet.
There's this art exhibition upstairs Pavla's Twee as Fuck Polaroids and Nicola Probert art exhibition. It pretty neat.
There's also a new smoking bit roof garden thing which overlooks the alley next to The MacBeth. A bit too crowded and cool for me though. I stay downstairs, leaning on the bar trying to stave off narcolepsy.
Mono Taxi
Mono Taxi are just a two piece, drums and guitar, with both folk doing vocals. For the early songs I was thinking they were cast in the White Stripes mould, you know, a little blues, a little garage. But it got more bombastic in the middle, stadium drum mincing.
Lots of healthy feedback and distorted guitar. yay
Little My
18 instruments / microphones
13 camera people
Its the mighty Little My collective again. The bass bunny still looks like Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks, I was discussing t with a chap off of the internet, who pointed out that Laura Palmer never had rabbit ears, and neither did her identical cousin Maddy.
They took forever to get set up and even then, for a seven piece with literally hundreds of instruments, there wasn't as much noise from the stage as you'd expect. Two glocks, stylophone, melodica, egg shakersand all the best of twee paraphernalia, but what you heard was mostly guitar.
Ah well.
It would be interesting to see them play on their home turf in Cardiff with however many extra members as they muster back there.
I saw Esiotrot practising in an alley round the corner during my inbetween band wandering and they sounded prety neat, trombone, ukelele, guitar. It was nice.
Esiotrot
However, on stage, they are atrocious.
They are out of tune, badly mixed, drifting in and out of lucidity. I don't know what to say. Maybe I just don't get them. What I do get is this must be one of their worse performances.
I'm scribbling this in the gallery upstairs and I can see the street outside, I can see Laura Palmer from Little My, she is very cute. A chap called Alexander wanders over and suggests I draw a picture of Esiotrot, and goes on to explain that he's in a band called To Arms Etc. I had a listen on MySpace when I was typing this up, they sound very good, they have a gig on the 31st of July.
Oh thank fuck, I think Esiotrot played a three song set.
The Bobby McGees
Skip Theatre
Hatcham Social
Theoretical Girl
Comet Gain
Acts
The Mai 68s
The Margarets
Mono Taxi
Little My
Esiotrot
Photies
Mine
Dansette's
CraigBoney's
