This is the final date of the five-day Artrocker Festival and the main event. Spread over the two Academies in Islington, they have seven bands playing their own brands of indie rock. I decided to get there early to see as many bands as possible for my £12 and first up were:
LO-FI CULTURE SCENE
Lo-Fi Culture Scene are fucking young. Young enough to have to be on first to make sure that they're home in time for bed. Young enough to wonder whether they actually understand the majority of what they're writing about or are writing the songs through imitating the bands that they love rather than being their artistic declaration. These questions never really leave your head the whole way through their set.
But Lo-Fi Culture Scene can play. The fact that the band consists of thirteen and fourteen year olds no longer matters as they release their Foals-esque guitar parts and the lead singer moves like a mini Steve Bays of Hot Hot Heat, hair and all. The band seem a little nervous and they have every right to be. Because the first few bands are on at the Bar Academy the place is rammed and this isn't helped by the front few rows being filled with similar aged kids which only suggests to me that their school friends have come out to see them. This means lots of pogoing and screaming girls giving the place the feel of a school disco, which is a little annoying.
Musically this band have buckets of potential and in five or so years they will be an absolute force to be reckoned with (if they can stay together with college and university probably on the agenda), but currently it is just too difficult to look beyond the age issue. If you want a solid support act in London that will really help to prove to people that age is really nothing but a number then look no further; just make sure not to book them on a school night.
http://www.myspace.com/theloficulturescene
THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT
The Official Secrets Act look like a Franz Ferdinand style band and they don't sound too dissimilar either. Vocals that sound like a mixture of Placebo and Of Montreal sit on top of spiky indie guitars and simple drumming, and this reeks of arthouse being used for pop measures. I can't help but think that this band have an eye on the charts and that saddens me. With the right backing they probably will be chart-bound but attempting to get there rather than getting there as a side product of merit stinks of a lack of integrity for me and this clouds my review of them.
They offer nothing new at all. Stand them against other art-rock bands and they're more fun than most, and musically they're not as bad as they are vocally. Thomas, the lead singer, goes red in the face yelping his vocals out but it sounds as though he has either a synthesiser or a sheep stuck in his throat that he desperately wants rid of. And the lyrics hardly help. The Girl From The BBC - which is where the band sound like Placebo most - has just two lines to it that are repeated over and over but these lyrics are entirely lacking in profundity or intelligence that you think that they could have been written before the gig. So Tomorrow - where the band manage to sound a little like Razorlight - has the lyrics: 'Everything is better at the weekend/ And everything is better with a car/ Everything is better with a girlfriend/ Who is ten times cooler than you are'. Lyrics like that are either written as a child, by someone who's first language isn't English or someone who is not interested in the importance of lyrics. Steve Lamacq apparently referred to the band as 'The most lyrically erudite I've heard in a while...' which prompted me to check the meaning of 'erudite' to ensure that the meaning of the word hadn't changed. It hasn't.
Passion to me isn't something measured in sweat or bulging veins but in the attention to detail that you take in your work and the pride that this shows. To me The Official Secrets Act fail to show very much of that. However you cannot fault their effort and as they finish their set they leave the stage a lake of sweat. I can only hope that it is evaporated, forms a cloud and when it rains back down to earth we're left with something slightly more authentic than The Official Secrets Act.
http://www.myspace.com/officialsecretsact
THE ANSWERING MACHINE
My second time of seeing the Answering Machine this year already and there really is little doubt surrounding their potential to be very successful. Tonight, while the band are still setting up, two girls rush onto the stage and start trying to hug and kiss Martin and Ben, lead singer/guitarist and drummer respectively, finally settling for a quick photo on their mobile before being asked to leave the stage by someone helping the band set up. The guys take it in their stride but this only brings to my attention the fact that these two guys are attractive enough to really make it as indie-boy pin-ups once the band become successful. This really only adds to the marketing package of this band though.
In my last review I mentioned that the band have the knack of sounding like a mixture of a lot of great bands and the pattern continues tonight. New song, Emergency, has a bass line reminiscent of Interpol and this leads the song through it's twists and turns with great stability. You Should've Called is the band's stab at epic-indie and, while Gemma's vocals are lower than surely is intended, it actually seems to work in favour of the song, giving it a haunting quality. And then for their penultimate song the band unleash Oklahoma, an older song, that has everyone jumping around and clapping along and the band have the crowd in the palm of their hand for three minutes.
The Answering Machine are going to be big. They seem capable of handling fast and slow songs with ease, manage to incorporate a sing-a-long chorus into almost every song, and Gemma is quite possibly a good shout for an appearance on the NME's Cool List at some point in time. This band are playing London a whole bunch in the next few weeks which, seeing that the band are from Manchester so would surely have their strongest fan base there, would suggest big things are on the horizon soon for them. Make sure that you see them before they're supporting The Pigeon Detectives or someone equally as bad.
http://www.myspace.com/theansweringmachine
GOOD SHOES
Good Shoes' debut and break-through album, Think Before You Speak, never really grabbed me until the last few days when I was repeatedly listening to it in preparation for this show. I think that the album has five or six amazing songs that really stand out and cling to your brain like a kitten with it's claws in your curtains, but the rest are good but forgettable. Live I hoped that they would manage to cement my interest in the band, but it seemed that the same problem prevailed.
Good Shoes have written some incredible single-worthy songs. Ending their set with the three-pronged onslaught of We Are Not The Same, Morden and All In My Head is enough to make most other bands jealous, while being able to pepper the rest of your set with gems like Blue Eyes, Small Town Girl and, my favourite of the lot, Never Meant To Hurt You seems almost greedy. Of course this is only more awe-inspiring when you figure into the mix that all of these songs have been drawn entirely from their debut album and are performed perfectly live. But this isn't the whole picture. While these songs get a rapturous response from the crowd, the rest of their set has the crowd standing motionless, barely even bobbing a head. Two of these songs could be excused for being new - Talk, which is one of these songs, however is another pop gem and will sit amongst the above songs as soon as it is released - but other than that they are still accountable for at least five songs that drain the room of movement and energy.
Good Shoes have their flaws. Lead singer, Rhys Jones, spends most of his time bopping around during the verses which means that his mouth is not always at the microphone when he sings and so you only get the odd lyric here and there. Some of their songs sound far too slapdash live. But when they get it right they really do get it right and I think that their second album could really say goodbye to the band playing venues of this size again.
http://www.myspace.com/goodshoes
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