Water Rats of London is a venue that we at W&H hold dear to our hearts, having seen some pretty amazing, dirty, and down-right weird acts there over the years.
The place is a dive, with a dingy sweaty theatre room in the back, and the obligatory fear-inducing subterranean toilets that stink of piss and are covered in lipstick graffiti (well, the ladies are at any rate). Granted, this article doesn't aim to be the Hello! mag for music venues, but the point is that Water Rats isn’t the type of place we associate with (soon-to-be) A-List Hollywood celebrity.
By this, we are referring to the Nu-Metal rockers PAGODA, who between them have an impressive back-catalogue of film and TV appearances.
Front-man Michael Pitt (categorically *not* related to Brad Pitt) played one of the leading roles in the cult indie film ‘The Dreamers’ (he’s the dishy one who looked exactly like Leonardo diCaprio and gets his kit off), and also the character ‘Blake’ (based on Kurt Cobain) in Gus Van Sant’s “The Last Days’. Later this year he’ll be hitting the big screen again, playing opposite Keira 'twigs-for-legs' Knightly in the romantic movie ‘Silk’. Oh, and Ryan Donowho (drums) has appeared in The OC, and modelled Levi 501s in a massive ad campaign. Unfortunately, this evening we didn’t get to see his behind in order to verify how nice the jeans looked. Dammit.
So we’ve established that they can act and look great (naked or otherwise). But is Pagoda a self-indulgent hobby a-la Keanu Reeve’s Dog Star (Dog’s Dinner, more like), or are they actually any good?
Well, you’ll be pleased to know that they’re none too bad at all.
Pagoda tout themselves as sounding like Nirvana and Sonic Youth. The Nirvana influence was certainly discernable, but this isn’t surprising given that Michael Pitt’s most famous track ‘Death to Birth’ was featured in ‘The Last Days’. However, the grunge influence that they speak of was only a fraction of the noise they were producing, and if anything they sounded more like Offspring and Incubus-Lite (or the Offsrping of Incubus – see what I did?), not a bad thing by any means.
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The use of umpteen guitars, some very heavy drumming, and a cello, with the bass cranked up to the Heavens, gave the music a particular type of energy. The type of energy you get when you sit on the washing machine whilst it’s on full spin.
Once the music had ended it felt as though you’d just had a really intense physical work out. Forget Posh’s latest weird new diet, just go stand in front of an amp at a Pagoda gig, you’ll have all your excess weight shook/wobbled off.
Despite their grunting heaviness, there was a real feel-good factor about this band. They even threatened the crowd with the prospect of a Phil Collins ballad. Now that’s black comedy for you. But instead they launched into a skin piercing number that forsook the obligatory guitar solo for the sound of a woman either giving birth or having pretty bad sex, with Michael Pitt screaming “Isn’t this great?! Isn’t this crazy?!” Ah… the sound of one-sided, atrocious bonking – ring any bells ladies?
The high levels of heavy metal vibrations emenating from the band's thrashings and noise-making actually made my skin hurt, and before I left I swore my face had literally dropped off. Needless to say I got some funny looks on the way home. Great gig though.
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