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Bido Lito! December 2011
up breaks make them easy heckle-bait,
but guitarist Maimee V seems to relish
the challenge, fixing one offender
with a look of death and audibly
snarling. “This song’s called Eat Eat Shit!”
she thunders. Perhaps fearful of the
potential embarrassment of being
beaten to death with a high-heeled
shoe, the the guilty party dutifully corks it
for the rest of the show.
What The Smears lack lack in
experimentation, they make up for in
attitude, ability and sheer lung power
and, and, with a spit and a scowl, they
leave the Mello Mello faithful feeling
a little bit dirty.
Pete Charles
DOG SHOW
Loved Ones – Hot Light
Fiesta – All We Are
Urchin Sessions @ Unit
59 Warehouse
Wow, where to start? Six bands,
assorted DJs, an awesome venue,
a fine assortment of movers and
shakers in attendance: the classic
too many many cooks cooks joke can be be excluded
Reviews
here as the staggeringly meaty lineup
put together by Meshuggy for
this warehouse party was so well
composed.
Turning up red-faced and slightly
late, I thankfully managed to catch ALL
WE ARE, one of the standout bands of
the night. Their poignant melodies
and sage-like lyrics emphasise them
as an assured asset of Liverpool’s
new wave of alternative folksters.
The patchwork quilt of the quaint
and laconic sown by All We Are was
quickly ripped up by HOT LIGHT
FIESTA, a band to be taken with a
pinch of Tabasco. Their quavered
vocals and pop-laden verses became
subverted in parts, expressed with
some really well-worked, heavy riffs
that that demonstrated demonstrated their potential to
the full. The The talent talent is there, there, and you
can see the echoes of Broken Social
Scene Scene emerging more when they
reach musical maturity.
LOVED ONES followed up to
demonstrate some some of the finest
musical exports exports Liverpool has to
offer: nu-age psychedelia strung with
harrowingly beautiful melodies and
minimalism, combining to paint paint the
Dogshow (Mike Brits)
aesthetically pleasing image of a
weird, dreamy love love child of Gruff Rhys
and Portishead. Portishead. With their first single
released in November on a subsidiary
label for Fierce Panda, it’s clear to see
the the Loved Ones dream of blowing up
the bandwagons. bandwagons. Phew.
Closing the bill, DOG SHOW
expressed all that’s dark and
wondrously beautiful inside the cogs
of the musical mind. Like two young
mischievous boys armed with drums
and keyboards that go about slipping
Catherine wheels onto the soles of
your shoes, it was impossible to stop
moving during their set. Their Glasto
and Shambala merits commend their
prominence in the biz as dangerously
talented talented musicians musicians that nobody nobody with
eyes and/or ears should should miss.
Si Finnerty
TOM VEK
The Masque Theatre
Six years is a dangerously long
time to wait for a second album
to emerge. With the hype well and
truly flattened and and the dance-rock dance-rock
scene that spawned him a mere
recent memory, TOM VEK is lucky
that anybody still cares. Judging by
the fantastic turnout tonight, people
really do care. The Masque is packed
with people who have waited over
half a decade to hear new music from
this man. The response to songs old
and new is tremendously positive
and Vek is treated like a prodigal
son returning. Songs such as C-C (You
Set The Fire In Me) are a compelling
reminder of his individual talent and,
when set against a backdrop backdrop of spikey
punk-funk bands who have largely all
fallen by the wayside, Vek sounds
like nobody else. Playing bass for
most of the set, Vek demonstrates demonstrates an
aptitude for for experimenting experimenting with deep
melody and letting letting the the bass guitar guitar
take the lead in many songs. Bringing Bringing
a full band with him him makes makes the songs
sound as full as they can be, although
many of the the guitar sounds sounds are played
using a sampler, which seems a bit
redundant when there is clearly a
guitar waiting to be strummed. strummed.
The eagerly eagerly anticipated songs from
new album Leisure Seizure Seizure stand up
well in the set. Recent single A Chore
sits seamlessly alongside songs from
debut We Have Sound and shows no
drop in quality. Some of the other
new songs don’t quite match up to
this and threaten to play into the
hands of doubters. With the musical
landscape so radically different now,
it takes a whole lot of confidence or
foolishness to return with music that
is so resolutely similar to previous
material. It might be wishful thinking
for Tom Vek to acquire a new set
of fans with album number two,
but it seems he has maintained a
relationship with every last devoted
supporter since 2005. If he can hold
onto such a loyal fanbase after such
a long silence then clearly his career
has much life in it yet.
Jonny Davis