Dartz, Tellison, Cats and Cats and Cats, This Town Needs Guns, Tube lord @ The Peel, Kingston 11-9-07 (gig review)
There’s been a lot of local excitement about shouty indie pop trio Tubelord lately. Therefore it is a perfect band to open for such talent as Tellison and Dartz.
Tubelord’s songs seem unstructured but fun; if everybody knew the words perhaps there would be more enjoyment but at this point the crowd was not very, well, present. The Kingstonian band play some chords of energetic androgynous joy rock. But in all honesty, they sound better on Myspace and only one song “Propeller” really stands out.
A mini crowd has developed for next band, ‘This Town Needs Guns’. Their sound is fresh and appealing, like Sunny Day Real Estate but more like Lukewarm Day Real Estate. The room suddenly has that amazing ingredient all live shows should have; atmosphere. Their melody is a breezy piano and high-fret guitar electricity laced with a voice of pure smoothness. It is pretty but the show goes on.
Cats and Cats and Cats are actually people! This was the first detour from my expectations. They are certainly funky, but to my ear the medley of eclectic noises just do not match up in a fluidity of sound. The instruments complement each other but there are a tad too many; as well as the usual guitars there are also synths, violins, a trumpet and both male and female vocals. They are random and random and random.
Tellison are up next fit in perfectly here in Kingston, the home of their record label. It is a liberating ecstasy to see a band play in a tiny venue where everybody is their friend and the words come as easily to the crowd as to the singer. It is sheer excitement, chaos and freedom all rolled into one musical wave. There are crowd surfers, the first of many tonight. Tellison stick to their usual setlist and barely change the order of the songs around. Despite their predictability though, it is this safety of sound that people love about the band. The night is finally aflame.
The success of Dartz has skyrocketed since the release of latest album “This Is My Ship”. Again, the audience knows the words and the fun of such small venues is the opportunity for interaction between band and viewers. The music alone is no disappointment but the night just keeps on escalating. Hit songs “Once, Twice, Again” and “Fantastic Apparatus” satisfy a crowd which has become a musical orgy. During the closing riffs, Dartz invite everybody onstage. People are eager to accept the invitation and in a flash of drunken insanity, the stage is torn apart by a riot of tight-jeaned shirtless mob. It’s simply astounding, a stunning set of songs and a perfectly entertaining climax.
ALL RSS FEEDS