There were six or seven acts playing that night and I caught the last four.
The Vaudeville Class are a three piece who play simple tunes with catchy riffs. They reminded me of The White Stripes and on the tracks where they cranked up the feedback, Zen Guerilla. The delivery during the chorus of "Lost Faith" also reminded me of early Black Sabbath.
Kill The Captains are described on one of their flyers as "like Sonic Youth playing at a school disco" and that's as good a description as I could come up with, I reckon. I enjoyed Paul's previous band, Porlock, and some of the wistfulness of their album remains, now fused with a full-on rocking heaviness. It's always great to watch a band with huge amounts of on-stage energy who are obviously enjoying themselves. Ferocious set-closing new track "Cellar Dweller" (not hard to guess which recent events inspired that) was awesome and could only have been improved by Leon making a Cobain-esque dive into the drum kit.
Audioporn were the penultimate act and provided an immediate visual contrast, taking to the stage in Hives-esque white suits, as opposed to Kill The Captains everyday clothes. I'm generally sceptical of bands who dress up too much and while they were undoubtedly catchy in places, the frontman plainly thinks too much of himself and the nearly 'spoken word' delivery in places left me cold. Cute keyboard player though.
The final act were The I Hearts, who really impressed me. They sound like a mix of Elastica, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, PJ Harvey, The Distillers and NY Loose (all bands I really like!) The effect is further accentuated by great stage presence for a three-piece and a frontwoman who appears to be the bastard daughter of a threesome between Beatrice Dalle, Brody Armstrong and Justine Frischmann. Very much up my street. I grabbed a sampler CD at the first opportunity.
A week on Saturday I'm going to the Earth Vs The Wildhearts 15th Anniversary gig, and while it'll be great to hear one of my all-time favourite bands playing straight through the album and b-sides that turned me on to them, after last weekend I'm determined to go and see more new and/or unsigned bands soon.
