The towering jumble of waiting equipment that forms the backdrop to Gindrinker’s set is a nicely ironic touch: Cardiff’s support champs get by on guitar, drum machine, cornet and ranting alone. Later, during Shit & Shine, this mass of kit will block access to the women’s toilet, slightly inconveniencing the three of them that are actually in the building. Gindrinker’s contribution to this night of maleness is their usual great blast of astringent tales about wretches and men found dead in pubs. They’re a weirdly Cardiff institution now, like the gargoyles on the castle wall.
Geisha bring the heavy, at least intermittently. They’re a strange mixture of shifting time signatures, crushing guitars and meandering digression. They can do good riff, certainly, but the best bit is during the obligatory guitars-leaning-against-amps-feedback-bit at the end, when the frontman tips water over himself while howling at the ceiling. He looks like a damp Richard Herring.
Shit & Shine look like the best band ever, in a sort of serial killer fashion parade kind of way: rabbit ears and green faces, Stetsons, rapist tracksuits, two cute drummers. Their first song is ace: seriously fucked up riffs like snakes, coasting drums, random screams. This is 50% of their set. The remaining half is taken up with a very long, slow, thudding drone number which I have chosen to call ‘Spunking Goodwill Up A Wall’. Eternal kudos to local promoter stars Lesson#1 and Forecast for continual services to brain mashing bookings, kudos of a more frustrated kind to Shit & Shine for mashing at least half my brain into an agreeable pulp.
Vivers
