Issue 74 / February 2017

40
Bido Lito! February 2017 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
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