Manflu
Advert
Sulk
Zoëtrøpe
Hoxton Square Bar And Kitchen, London
Monday October 31 2011
Crumbs, things are getting noisy in here, and we've only just started. Zoëtrøpe are a grrl-trio who make an energy-rush uproar, all pummelling drums and bug-eyed vocals. How, you ask, can a vocal be bug-eyed? I dunno, but Zoëtrøpe manage it. They're like a deconstructed speedfreak version of Babes In Toyland, all velocity and catharsis. They make a big hammering hubbub, every song a two-minute set-to, like a fight in the street. I bet they'd be scary if you met them in a dark alley. Fortunately, on stage, they're just fine.
Any minute now they're going to announce the Madchester revival. Well, that's probably what Sulk are hoping. Theoretically, they'll be well placed to provide the top tunes when baggy comes back. Well, I don't know about that.
If Zoëtrøpe are a deconstructed Babes In Toyland, Sulk are a meticulously reconstructed Stone Roses, assembled with all due reverence and a careful eye on the original blueprint. Their songs sound as if they're going to turn into 'I Wanna Be Adored' any minute, but never quite do. The band do a decent enough job of emulating their heroes, but they're almost a tribute act. I dutifully wait for a spark of originality to show itself, but I don't see one. And anyway, now that the real Stone Roses have reformed, doesn't that rather undermine the market for the wannabes?
For once, Advert aren't the boys next door. The band's usual preppy casualwear has been replaced tonight by blood, guts, and girls' clothes. Perhaps the lads have taken jobs as cross-dressing serial killers, but didn't have time to change out of their working clothes. Oh, no, wait - it's Halloween. Still, by some bizarre process of osmosis, some of the blood and guts seems to have seeped into Advert's music. Their ragged-edged post-Jesus And Mary Chain guitar-grind sounds extra potent tonight. Or maybe the presence of Bo Ningen's drummer, giving it loads behind the kit, is the factor that's driving the band to greater heights.
I've remarked before that the central problem with Advert is that while they have the sound, they don't have the songs. It's not like I want everything to be a Chas 'n' Dave-style singalong (perish the thought), but a chorus or two you can recall after the gig would be useful. But tonight, the band's relentless noise-assault makes sense. Maybe that's the way forward for Advert. Never mind the tunes, feel the noise.
Now here come Manflu. They're all dressed up as a surrealist ninja army. It's that Halloween thing again. But then, if you wanted to describe Manflu in three words, 'surrealist ninja army' would sum them up rather well, I reckon. Manflu make a killer racket - which, of course, we know. But they're cooking with gas tonight. Pointy fingers of guitar goose the crowd. Rhythms come in from odd angles, like gatecrashers who've found the back way in to the party. Well, the party's certainly going strong right now.
Manflu brew up a boiling rush of clang and clatter, winding their music up to a pitch of tension and then pitching it into freefall, as if hurling their songs out of high-flying aircraft. Sometimes, the band seems to have only a tangental relationship with anything so conventional as rock 'n' roll. And then, in the next minute, it's as if they're reinventing the stuff before our eyes and ears. Or at least giving it a good talking-to.
It's not all a ruckus, mind. At times, the band row back on the noise, just to give us a momentary burst of relative calm. But soon enough it all cranks up again, with the singer stomping and whirling in her flapping purple dressing gown, like a witch who's late for work. Manflu do actually have a song called 'Wizard' - that's the one where the guitar goes gingg-gingg-a-gingg-ah! - so maybe there are indeed arcane forces at work here. But then again, no. I think it's just Manflu at work here. But that's still pretty arcane.
For more photos from this gig, find the bands by name here.
