Buffalo ignored the reminders from the neon company and have suffered the consequences. This seems to have upset me more than the rest of tonight’s crowd, who shockingly haven’t missed the iconic wall mounted message.
Luckily The Muscle Club are here to lift my gloom. They started out as a jangly, spikey, Johnny Foreigner-esque indie band back in the day but seem to be growing into a different beast. The band sound 22% fuzzier this evening and 31% more beefy. This is despite losing a guitarist in London to “shoplifting” and drafting Decimals man Al in at the last minute. Apparently he learned 11 songs in 30 minutes. Pretty impressive. Luckily he was only called upon to play about 5, one of which was a rather good crash through a Fugazi cover which he appeared to know quite well.
Wonderswans. Yeah, Wonderswans. I was already writing a shit review based on the apalling name and when they started with a messy instrumental thrash about. I was quietly confident of being right. After the Pulled Apart By Horses start though, they turned into Dinosaur Jr and we enjoyable, I’d go as far as to say good. If there was a venn diagram where the first circle was ‘bands I’d recommended people go and see’ and the second circle was ‘bands I wouldn’t go out of my way to see again’, they’d be in the middle bit. Wouldn’t rush through town, throwing aside old ladies to get to their headline show but would be pleasently surprised to see them on a support bill. The band may even share this view as their single had about 7 minutes of guitar hero outro, this is a good thing for me but probably not for radio playlist gurus.
In between bands I find out Man Utd have lost to Burnley and hear a story about a resturant in London that is pitch black and where all the waiters are blind. There is a ‘surprise’ option on the menu. I just hope that there are lights in the kitchen.
Copy Haho are literally a Scottish indie band and while I’m going percentage crazy I’d say that I’m a fan of 78% of Scottish indie bands. They are described on the flyer as “brilliant Pavement-esque rock ‘n’ roll”. I can see how this has come to pass but in reality the band aren’t as lo-fi or shuffling as Pavement, they share more in common with The Thermals. Similar off key vocallist but more punky. I like them and rue the fact that I have to leave 4 songs in to go and talk too quickly (after drinking about a gallon of Coke) on Bethan Elfyn’s radio show. I’ll look forward to seeing them again at the Los Campesinos! show at Swn. If I’m not running from Chapter or something. Or it doesn’t clash with something at Meze Festival (which is 100% ace).
Plug done.
