It’s a cold night late in January. The week before payday after Christmas, and a Thursday. You’d hardly expect a huge turnout for a little-known band from out of town. A long way out of town, in fact, since the rather uninspiringly-monikered The Yawns hail from Glasgow. But then, any night curated by Please Please You can be regarded as being stamped with a trademark of quality, and people have, after some six years, cottoned on to this.
As if to prove the point, Asio’s Eyes, a local foursome, turn in a set that alone justified the effort of turning out. Granted, they’ve raided their elder siblings’ record collections for their influences and the local charity shops for their shirts (I’d have sworn the singer’s paisley pattern effort was the one I purchased from C&A circa 92 were it not for the fact I was wearing it myself) but fuck me, they’re tight. The guitarist is all about the texture, sculpting sonic shapes from nothing, while singer Sam Howarth takes Morrissey as his starting point but pulls in directions that make him his own man.
Dead Bird is just one man – Falling Spike Chris Wilkinson – with a set-up consisting of guitar, drum machine / synth and vocals with which he conjures beautifully minimal alt-pop songs with a lilting indie slant. Elements of ‘17 Seconds’ and ‘Faith’ era Cure filter through in the sparse guitar sound, while the simple drum patterns thud out a metronomic backbeat. Wilkinson himself, meanwhile, remains an understated presence, his words softly sung and the chat between songs sparing. It works well, and the fact the crowd remain hushed during his performance speaks volumes.
On the face of it, The Yawns are just another indie band. And a lazy one, at that: they turn up, play their album, and call it a night. Huh. But it’s all in the delivery, and far from being tiresome, they’re an exhilarating blend of jangliness and garage, held together by some energetic and extremely tight percussion. Front man Sean Armstrong is nothing if not compelling, and stands in contrast to his band mates. While they work up a sweat, he ambles around the stage – and even delivers one songs seated near the door to the dressing room – looking not so much unmoved as barely able to stay awake. And while the band fire out glorious bursts of indie pop that’s tantalizingly crisp and bursting with dreamy melodies, his vocals are drowned in a synapse-popping swathe of slapback and a tidal wave of reverb.
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“Has anyone else thought about suicide?” he asks nonchalantly by way of an introduction to ‘Calling Colin Through a Wall’. Even during the set’s closer, ‘I Believe in UFOs’, through which the dishevelled front-man shrieks unintelligibly and yelps, dog-like, amidst a maelstrom of driving guitar and drums, he manages to appear semi-comatose as he shuffles about somnambulantly. It’s quite a spectacle, but it’s also quite, quite brilliant. The songs are short, well-crafted and played with precision. Regardless of what the name might suggest, The Yawns are anything but dull, dreary or soporific, and are instead a truly exhilarating live act with some cracking tunes.
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