For my fifth consecutive year at Live at Leeds, I set myself the task of providing a flavour of the range and variety of acts the event offers, and, similarly, the venues the city has to offer. Live at Leeds is a celebration of everything that makes the city such a buzzing place for music.
For many, and I’ll include myself among them, The Brudenell Social Club encapsulates everything that’s great about the city. Fostering art over profit, as well as selling good beer at WMC prices, it provides a space to discover infinite shades of weird and wonderful, and so it only seemed right to spend a few hours there early doors. It was a good call: COLOUR OF SPRING delivered some pleasantly jangly indie, and their positive energy compensated the off-key and rather flat vocals.
In the Games Room, FEHM stirred up a dark post-punk noise that evoked the spirit of Leeds circa 1983. Paul Riddle paces the stage, tense, manic and deranged, spewing nihilism against a stark backdrop of spiky guitars, icy synths and a rhythm section that kicks out a relentless amphetamine groove characteristic of old-school goth. It’s powerful stuff, and it’s fair to say that with such an intense and challenging performance, they proved to be an absolute revelation and were quite probably the band of the day, for my money at least.
Following the sad demise of The Witch Hunt late last year, the emergence from the ashes of ACTOR was welcome news. On stage, Louisa Osborn smiles a lot. And she has a lot to smile about. Featuring the same lineup and the same perfectly distilled ingredients as their forebears, the band’s new material is strong. Waves of atmospheric guitar provide the perfect foil to Louisa’s stunning vocals.
JOHNNY QUITS cranked out a set of hairy 70s psychedelic / progressive rock. Drawing heavily on Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, they’re practically a period reproduction. The hair! The flares! The bassist’s cutoff shirt! Wait, what’s that all about?
OH BOY! May hail from Northampton, but they could easily have come from Stateside, with their indie / alt-rock stylings, plaid shirts, floppy and hair, specs and generally nerdy demeanour. They’ve got that West Coast grunge pop sound nailed, and are brilliant fun. Sure, I could have been watching Gaz Coombes, and certainly no disrespect to those who were, but it’s the fresh talent on offer that always makes Live at Leeds such an exciting event. History has shown that they’ve hosted manifold small bands on the cusp of going stratospheric, and if you want to see the next big thing in an intimate setting, this is the event at which to do it.
Heading townwards via the university, I arrived in time to catch the end of GLACIER PACIFIC’s set at Stylus, but soon tired of their arena-friendly rock, not least of all due to the band’s absolute lack of charisma. The drum sound was phenomenal, though.
The sound wasn’t too shabby for Oxford foursome PIXEL FIX, but you’d have never have known it from the endless gripes about the mic and monitor levels from the Top Man catalogue models on stage. Infinitely tweaking their crisp, clean, technical sound didn’t change the fact they play super-indulgent muso-orientated Two Door Bombay Bicycle Cinema Club type guff. I can only assume the ‘wet’ reverb the singer was hassling for in his second mic was to match the wet music he and his mates play.
Hey, you guys! Mick Jagger wants his moves back! Ian Burgess wants his hair back! Sure, they may have appropriated an air amount from a range of historical sources, but THE VRYLL SOCIETY nevertheless proved to be an altogether more exciting proposition. Fusing elements of shoegaze, Krautrock and 70s rock, they built some spaced-out crescendos during the course of a sleek and swirling set.
Next stop, the Leeds Beckett SU for BRUISING. Core duo of Naomi Baguley and Ben Lewis showcased a full band lineup to thrash out their fuzzed-out indie pop with panache. Dismal bass sound notwithstanding, it would be fair to describe their performance to what was clearly the largest audience of their career, as a triumph.
Having done some of the larger venues, it was time to swing over to the basement rock venue that is the Key Club, and I landed in just as PROM had kicked off their powerful set of noisy no-wave grunge. Petite front-woman Angela Won-Yin Mak may be immaculately presented and demur in appearance, but her banshee howl is shiveringly ferocious. The end is result is quite simply ace.
HYENA also proved that grunge most certainly isn’t dead, with a blistering set built around big riffs and burning angst. They also succeeded in getting a mosh-pit going for the last song, and in much a small space, it was tantamount to a riot.
Perhaps the last band I’d have expected to elicit a major mosh-off would have been HOOKWORMS, but it seems that the kids of Leeds these days are all about the noisy Krautrock. Playing in near-darkness, save for blinding strobes and flickering white light effects that played hell with the retinas, they whipped the rammed 1,500 capacity venue into frenzy. I’ve never witnessed so many girls in their late teens and early 20s going absolutely berserk to a band like Hookworms, and I was lucky to escape with only minor bruising and less minor tinnitus.
|
I figured I should check out PALMA VIOLETS to see what all the fuss was about. Having witnessed the band walk on stage to a storm of beer and flying plastic cups, and having heard them dispatch a succession of entirely forgettable songs that epitomise the term ‘hit indie’ (think The Libertines, only with terrace-chanting to draw attention to the half-arsed choruses), I’m still none the wiser. The singer wears a hat and they’re loud, but ultimately they have precisely nothing to recommend them, and I make a sharp exit after a handful of songs. Better to let one of the 500 hopefuls desperate to see them (and The Cribs after) who are queueing round the block than prolong the agony. Still, credit to the organisers for bagging an act that’s so ridiculously hit right now.
On arriving at Nation of Shopkeepers, just around the corner, I find I’m just in time for JAGRAARA, an all-female trio from London. Their sparse musical backing pitches their magnificent three-way harmonies to the fore, and the urban beats make for a neat twist. Shopkeepers may have cut back on their hand-pulled beers in favour of hipster craft beers on keg, but I couldn’t grumble as I supped a pint of Leeds Pale to their mesmerising melodies that made me feel that escaping the Town Hall had been the best move I could have made. ‘They’re a bit XX-y’ I hear one talkative punter comment, and on one hand he’s got a point, but on the other, their rich, harmonious and emotionally rich music reaches the parts other minimal urban acts can’t reach.
It’s a rather sad indictment that people should be queueing round the block for bands like Palma Violets and The Cribs, and that commercial ‘alternative’ acts like Lawson should pack out the O2 and Reverend and the Makers should provide a major draw over at The Faversham (although fair play to WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS and SLAVES for taking the Brudenell to capacity – I’d have been there myself if only I’d mastered the art of self-cloning), while THURSTON MOORE should be playing to a venue that’s at only two-thirds capacity. Consider the facts: with Sonic Youth, this man practically invented noise rock, no-wave and grunge.
And now, in his mid-50s, Moore isn’t about to go soft on us. Sure, the set, which draws primarily on the latest album ‘The Best Day’ has a pop slant, reminding us that we’d have never had bands like Pavement or The Wedding Present or Band of Susans without him, but they batter away at a single riff – usually a mutation of a single chord and an endless loop of bass and drum that owes everything to the motoric spine of Krautrock – for up to a quarter of an hour. It’s as spellbinding as it is banter-free, and while my feet are killing me, it’s impossible to resist the pull of watching a legend at work. ‘Speak to the Wild’ has a nagging emotional edge to it as well as a dark spark and an unstoppable riff that ebbs and flows and builds to a monumental crescendo.
It’s perhaps credit to Thurston that even after all this time, his staunchly uncommercial work can diminish a crowd, whittling out the casuals while those who really appreciate it go bonkers. The bottom line is that with Steve Shelley holding things tight on drums, this is a big deal, and as close to a Sonic Youth gig as you’re going to get these days. Of course you can’t expect the hits: even now he’s still testing himself and the fans.
It’s the perfect finalé to yet another belting Live at Leeds, and it’s not hard to see why it won the title of ‘Best Metropolitan Festival’ last year. There’s something for everyone, and more than any other festival, it’s about diversity. Live at Leeds 2015 certainly didn’t disappoint, and as it looks to Is 10th anniversary next year, it’s an event that’s going from strength to strength.
|
