Manflu
The Ethical Debating Society
Bull And Gate, London
Friday September 16 2011
There I was, thinking that you couldn't possibly get a less rock 'n' roll name for a band than The History Of Apple Pie, and then I go and stumble upon The Ethical Debating Society.
Now, I know you shouldn't read too much into mere names, but something tells me this band aren't going to be all leather trousers, Billy Idol sneers, and songs about cruisin' down the freeway on their Harleys.
But - hooray! - neither are they the staid and earnest bunch of furrowed-brow merchants the name might suggest.
The Ethicals (c'mon, with a four word name, they're going to get abbreviated) are actually a spiky and colourful mess of messthetics, pulling jagged lo-fi pop confections out of the purple air in a flurry of twin-guitar splinters. There's no bass in the line-up - the basslines are the gaps in the guitar-drums scratch and crash, a cacophony that has the clattery quality of a bunch of tin cans falling off a wall. It's all enticingly tangental to the leather trousers end of things.
The nearest thing The Ethicals have to a love song is entitled 'Kill You Last' - "I like you, I like you, I'm going to kill you last". It's a fine piece of strop-pop, and although The Ethical Debating Society (there, they can have their full name again as a grand finale) probably are more pop than strop at heart, I dig their attitude and clamour.
Attitude and clamour are also in full effect when Manflu turn up to crank up their clank and thrum.
One of my pet theories about music - and it's never failed me yet - is that the best bands always have a slightly scary quality about them.
Manflu are certainly scary. The look like they're on day release from a secure institution, and they make a noise like Captain Beefheart in a tumble dryer. Which makes them brilliant, obviously.
The singer stalks the stage wearing a rock 'n' roll scowl. The guitar fires darts of sonic tinplate into the audience: metallic silvery spikes of noise that squash into strange shapes on impact.
Strange shapes are what Manflu are all about. The band is oddly, awkwardly, defiantly other - which, of course, neatly fits one of my other pet theories about music. All the best stuff has that quality of othernerss.
But Manflu know that it's not enough simply to be interestingly, scarily, weird. You've gotta make the kids dance, too, right? So there's a big, insistent, beat behind everything, a rhythmic kickabout that powers the noise along and makes Manflu, even at their most pointy and angular, a rather groovy proposition.
Scared? You will be. But not too scared to dance.
Manflu:
The Ethical Debating Society:
For more photos from this gig, find the bands by name here.
