Heck love each other. This is noted by the fact that, between one songs and in response to a complaint from drummer Steve that they had mucked up a song, Mike turns around and shouts WELL ITS NOT MY FUCKING FAULT, only then to begin a 5 minute tirade against every other member of the band, calling Matt Carter a jizz buffoon and Jemma a slut. Nice. To be honest, Heck are a welcome foil after Saturday’s Loose love fest. Someone told me they sound like Shellac… Maybe early Shellac, around My Black Ass. They’re certainly quite angular, you could draw perfect squares off those guitars. Jemma’s vocals are less indignant and angry than Mr Albini but then she isn’t the hulk of bitterness that he is. She’s also stolen a red belt for tonight, she admits with glee before telling us the next song is about Witchcraft, which it probably almost certainly wasn’t. What a beautiful, nasty spikey hate panto little joy Heck are.
(Wrestling saesneg off the mic, Mr I Monologue continues the review)
The first thing I notice about The French Quarter is that 2 of them look like Liverpool’s Champions League winning midfielders, Xabi Alonso and Didi Hamman. Once I got past that I started listening to the music. It began rather unassumingly, post rock in the quiet/quiet/quiet mould until the third song which went a bit prog and sounded like Secret Machines. After that myself and Saesneg played ‘spot the influence’, at various points we had a Snow Patrol introduction, a jangly Sonic Youth tribute, some Coldplay drumming and most scarily, a Simple Minds guitar riff. The band held these crazy bag of influences together rather well and although they’ll never change the world, I can see why they’re getting attention from labels and press. Enough lofi to keep the musos happy sprinkled with the right about of commercialism to interest the masses.
(While he isn’t looking, Saesneg trips up the intruder and knocks him out. Mr Monologue has not been seen since)
Ahem. Popular Workshop. On their myspace they seem… alright. Actually going by their myspace stuff they could be an interesting band. Reptilians is skin-crawingly infectious. But on stage, last night at least, they just fell apart. Gypsy, which I’m sure isn’t his real name, didn’t realise only 30 people had shown up for the gig and was swaggering like he was playing to 300 screaming children. He did himself no favours when, at the end of the set, he proclaimed he had been recording in the same studio as the Manics and Albini. That’s lovely – so fucking what? We ended up with two grown men jumping around and tub thumbing with no real momentum from the crowd to feed them – like seeing your uncle spazz out to Charlotte Church on his own in the corner of the room. It really didn’t help at all that the sound was so atrocious. We couldn’t hear the bass at all, which trashed the earlier mentioned new single and made them sound like a guitar mash. In truth, PW probably weren’t that bad, but their lack of humility and “we rock the fucking world” attitude wrecked it. What a bunch of tits.
