The Lord moves in mysterious ways.  This evening He is trying to convey a message to me using only a bicycle and someone I’ve not seen in a while.  I think I get the gist of what He’s saying but it’d be a whole lot easier if he just emailed me.  This brings us nicely to our first band…

Quintamity sound a bit like when your favourite nineties grunge band discovered heroin and started releasing angst ridden acoustic EPs.  They’re not terrible, they can play and the singer has a decent voice but they’re very miserable and not terribly fun to watch.  My friend said they were like Crowded house after too much gin at a cousin’s wedding.  Well, she said most of that, I used a bit of poetic license.  In short, I’d rather just read about their torment and heartbreak rather than stand in a room and listen to it.

Silence At Sea bound onto the stage and for some reason I don’t think I’m going to like them.  I’m a bit twee-d out at the moment.  As soon as they start I realise I’m wrong.  I like them.  This feels dirty, I have a wave of guilt as if I’ve stolen a ham from my grandmother’s larder.  I shrug this off.  Even though they begin the second song with a typewriter intro this isn’t tweecore.  They actually mix Moldy Peaches playful alt.folk with a bit of the Decemberists darker, multi-instrumental edge.  At the end of the day twee isn’t a dirty word, if you have good songs and a good singer then you’re a good band, even if the singer is playing a blowy, pipey, keyboard thing which may be the unsexiest instrument in modern music.

Circa Regna Tonat rock.  They always rock.  I’ve seen them roughly a million times now and they never let me down.  Sweeping, intense, loud, stripey, intricate, shouty, stubbley, Circa are all of these things and more.  They combine post-rock melody and math-rock finger tapping with bursts of screaming which sound like hard work on the ears.  It isn’t.  They always have a tune.  I can’t think of a band to compare them to right now but it certainly isn’t Rage Against The Machine which somebody downstairs said.  He was quickly corrected by the singer of a well known Cardiff beat combo.  You can choose your friends but not your Buffalo audience.  A venue so tight they only pay half their neon bill.