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TenekThe Fauns
Blindness
You, Coma
Magic Mountain

Nambucca, London
Friday September 9 2011

 

 

With a name like Magic Mountain, I was expecting tonight's opening band to be some sort of mystical hippy-country outfit, all twingly-twangly guitars and twinkly hillbilly mysticism. Fortunately, the Mountains don't live up (or down) to their name.

They're a minimalist fuzzwave trio: guitar, bass, electronix, and a nice line in thumpa-thumpa rhythms blanketed by duvets of distorted six-stringery. Well, that's a relief, then.

But, perhaps, the band are a bit too minimalist. Their stage presence never really gets beyond 'just stand there', and their songs do tend to slip through my memory in an indistinct cloud of guitar. Good sound, but the rest needs work, I reckon. Starting with the name.

You, ComaI've seen You, Coma before, so I know what I'm in for. Proggy muso-meanderings, basically. Not my thing. Still, I'll give the Coma boys a bit of attention, just to see if they've had a collective brainstorm and written a tune you can whistle.

The short answer to that one is - nope. At best, You, Coma make an avant-rock commotion that recalls the more experimental moments of Sonic Youth. But while you can usually rely on Sonic Youth to lighten the load by throwing in a bubblegum singalong like 'My Friend Goo', this lot just carry on with the clever suff.

You, Coma are like a rock band designed by a bunch of maths teachers. Indeed, the band's appearance, all casualwear and facial hair (yes, they've all got beards) does rather suggest the common room at a teacher training college, circa 1975.

At intervals a poet (presumably on loan from the English Literature department) climbs on stage to declaim incomprehensibly over the labyrinthine noise from the traditional slim volume. I rather admire the band's willingness to flirt with pretension in this way - not that I imagine You, Coma are bothered about seeming pretentious. They're just doing their thing. Hats off to them for that. But it's not my thing.

BlindnessI'm frankly rather relieved when Blindness take the stage. This is the band I'm here for; the band I willingly brave dodgy support acts to see.

As it happens, Blindness themselves are a support act tonight, which is a somewhat strange state of affairs. If the suddenly-crowded room is anything to go by, they've got enough of a following to headline.

Well, anyway, here they come, radiating a slightly scary cool. All the best bands radiate a slightly scary cool. The beat drops like Monty Pyhon's 16-ton weight, Debbie Smith's guitar comes skidding in sideways, the bass marches straight for your head, and Blindness are in full effect.

Well, maybe not quite full effect. The soundmix is rather less forceful than it should be. It's as if everything is on slightly less than eleven tonight. But Blindness churn and rage regardless, and Blindness on slightly less than eleven is still a pretty intense experience. I fight the urge to go over to the mixing desk, elbow the techie out of the way, and shove all the faders up. Best to stay close to the action at the front, I reckon.

The visual focal point of Blindness - and the principal source of the band's scary cool - is vocalist Beth Rettig. She contorts herself like she's inventing some sort of new and weird yoga live on stage, all the while giving it an assertive, acerbic vocal from behind a curtain of hair. It's an odd paradox that while Blindness write songs that deal with things going out of control - 'Confessions' is a traumatic tale of a life in bits - the band's delivery is never less than magisterial. But then Beth Rettig can intone a line like 'All your friends are dropping like flies/What'll you do when the last one dies?' and it's as if she's come up behind you and pushed you to the edge of a cliff. Always on the edge of control - that's where Blindness teeter.

And now, our headline band. I feel rather sorry for The Fauns, arriving on stage just as a fair chunk of the crowd heads for the door. It can't be easy for a headline band to realise that you've just been upstaged by the support. The Fauns do have fans - it's not as if the room entirely empties - but things have thinned out noticeably by the time the band launch into their winsome, drifting, misty shoegaze.

And maybe, in that description, we have the reason why The Fauns aren't the big pull tonight. There are so many bands around now, doing exactly this kind of fuzzy, female-fronted 'gaze, that with the best will in the world it's not really possible to single out The Fauns as anything exceptional. They're not bad, you understand. But - to be blunt about it - when you've heard one breathily ethereal female vocal shimmering gossamer-like over plangent guitars, you've heard 'em all.

I think I'll leave The Fauns to it, and shimmer, gossamer-like, towards the exit. Yes, tonight's gig belonged to Blindness. Next time, mind - faders up, please.

The Fauns

The Fauns: MySpace | Facebook

Blindness: MySpace | Facebook

You, Coma: MySpace | Facebook

Magic Mountain: MySpace | Facebook

For more photos from this gig, find Blindness by name here.

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