40 Bido Lito! <strong>February</strong> <strong>2017</strong> Reviews and lead singer Andrew Heselton. They’ve got tunes too. A pleasing mixture of 70s rock, Jeff Buckley-esque vocals, and prog metal (step forward, guitarist Graeme Heywood) reaches its culmination in new single Disappear. This whole event is the launch party for the song, and it’s an old-school (primary school) party with party bags, pizza, and cake. As well as drummer Sam Dobbyn working his behind off, they’re joined for a few songs by guest vocalist and mistress of the keys, Nicola Hardman. Even technical problems can’t diminish the sunny disposition of this band, who are so obviously chuffed to be in a Kitchen Street packed out to see them and welcome their new release into the world (Completely Me also gets a wild reception, before it’s even begun). By the time Chocolate closes the set, Heselton is singing to everyone atop a stack of amplifiers, and the whole room feels like it’s up there with him. Stuart Miles O’Hara / @ohasm1 TOY (Darren Aston) JAMES YORKSTON Charlie McKeon – The Matt Barton Band Mellowtone @ The Magnet evening being greeted with enthusiasm and encouragement from the audience. Clearly, the songs I’ve missed have held the attention of this appreciative crowd, and the band certainly seem to enjoy belting out their own brand of psych rock that’s heavy on the heavy, coupled with high-powered and angsty punches. Brighton’s PRINCE VASELINE, stripped down here to the duo of Max Earle and Snowy Mountain, bring haunting layers of angular analogue keyboards, layered simply across and around Earle’s guitar and vocal. This leaves plenty of space around Prince Vaseline’s sound, which adds to the drama. At times a seemingly disparate pairing, there’s still some worth and interest to be found in their set, with its krautrock references and the pair’s guarded introspection. TOY bring much promise from the opening bars of the very first song. Clearly happy to be in front of the crowd, a feeling which is absolutely reciprocated across the room, the set is relentless, unremitting and definitive. Here to promote new album Clear Shot, they deliver a committed set of angular, driving pop songs, perfectly poised, energetic and engaging throughout. With a bedrock of an explosive piledriver of a rhythm section, and twisting, distorted guitars, they seem to have acquired a new front, a new bounce. It’s a new positivity they seem at one with though, and they wear it very well. And although their formative comparisons to Felt have never seemed more accurate than in new songs like I’m Still Believing (not that those comparisons were necessarily a bad thing), the band seem to have taken a more full on, less jangly approach, and the crowd welcome this energy, this propulsion, with eyes wide and arms open. There’s a lilting play on the melodics in the new songs, which made the sound difficulties they seemed to be experiencing a little more than just distracting, actually more detracting as we struggled at times to pick out Tom Dougall’s voice for the first third of the set. That rhythm section, though. Thoroughly empowering and determined playing from Charlie Salvidge and ‘Panda’ Barron, the latter of who ended up in the crowd on several occasions, bass held high, plainly enjoying the fact that he’s in such a good live band. Another important change to the sound is the addition of a new keyboard player, Max Oscarold, whose presence adds a certain intensity, both sonically, in terms of the textural drones and analogue stabs, but also visually in terms of his disconcerting stare. The new material certainly sits in well with old favourites like Join The Dots and Heart Skips A Beat; but I wonder, as the band leave us in a swirl of feedback, where this new-found sound will take them next. Paul Fitzgerald / @NothingvilleM LILIUM Ovvls – Etches – God On My Right Deathly Records @ 24 Kitchen Street Not one word of a lie, as I’m putting in my earplugs at the start of the evening, someone standing nearby blindfolds themselves with their scarf and sits on the floor. Perhaps someone else covers their mouth at the same time. Don’t be mistaken – GOD ON MY RIGHT aren’t evil, though perhaps they wish they were. At their best, this duo and the noise they make – a synthesis of drum machines and buzzsaw guitar not far removed from Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole – are dark and sexy. They’re followed by ETCHES, who are sounding fierce these days. Apart from the passing resemblance to Radiohead (not new or old Radiohead, but the same musical thread that runs through that band’s catalogue), more than one of my fellow gig goers mentions them in the same breath as Performance-era Outfit. High praise indeed. Deathly Records’ avowed mission is to seek out the sinister, and they’ve found it in OVVLS. They wear their heart on their black, trailing sleeve. That said, even among the MIDI vocals, singer Stephanie Stokes’ delivery of her lyrics calls to mind the great alternative frontwomen of the 90s – Shirley Manson or Justine Frischmann, perhaps. They’ve got a strong aesthetic, but just as you’re wondering what else they have to help you get a purchase on the set, they drop Winter, which really ought to be a Bond theme. Like 007, LILIUM have a great silhouette. With bridesmaid of Frankenstein Emma Heselton on bass and a backdrop of candle wicks, fluid dynamics, and glowing filaments, their gothic accoutrements are neatly balanced by the bags of charisma possessed by arch-druid A set of songs about life in the city start the evening off, as THE MATT BARTON BAND open up with a healthy brace of Northern folk pop songs, loaded to the brim with characters and dryly-observed wit. It’s a counterpoint that contrasts well with both the night’s headliner and CHARLIE MCKEON, who brings a gentle approach to his main support slot. Based around some of the best folk guitar to be found anywhere in the city, McKeon’s set varies between traditional Appalachian ballads – such as the much-covered Americana standard John Hardy – and his own quirky folk offerings like I’m Going To Join An Army. Poor JAMES YORKSTON. After having his last show for Mellowtone in Leaf disturbed and disrupted by a particularly loud open mic night a couple of years back, they’d promised him, and him them, that this appearance at The Magnet as part of his Christmas tour would make up for it. But as he takes to the stage in front of a crowd seated around candlelit tables on the Magnet dancefloor, it becomes clear that he thought he’d spend the next hour and a half struggling to find his voice, and reaching to find that warm and natural burr with which we’re all so familiar. One thing Yorkston’s writing depends on is the space and silences he creates as part of the rich and instinctive storytelling style. Regardless, stoicism would be the order of this particularly pleasant performance, and he pulls himself through with typical and strong sense of warm Caledonian humour, and the sheer strength of his intuitive songwriting. He really needn’t have worried. The entire bidolito.co.uk
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