Dirty Revolution: Before the Fire
Posted by jamie on Feb 15, 2010
Dirty Revolution will release their first full-length album, “Before the Fire”, in March on Rebel Alliance Recordings.
To celebrate its release, the band will play an Album Launch show at Cardiff Barfly on 6th March, with the Melophobes and the fantastic Anti Vigilante.
There’ll also be a free instore show at Spillers records at 4pm on the day of the gig.
New Riot album
Posted by chips on Feb 13, 2010
New Riot expect their first full-length album to be on available 11th March. They’ll be playing it from start to finish at 12 Bar in Swindon on that day (entry £3) “in preparation for the [spunge] tour..”.
Yesh.
Valentine’s gift. from Josh Doyle
Posted by chips on Feb 12, 2010
Former Dum Dums frontman Josh Doyle has a Valentine’s gift for you: an acoustic version of the song “Army of Two” from last year’s “Middletown EP”. Get it here.
We Are The Union w/ Kids Can’t Fly, Anti Vigilante and the JB Conspiracy
Posted by jamie on Feb 10, 2010
Kids Can’t Fly, Anti Vigilante,
The JB Conspiracy, We Are The Union
Friday 5th February, 2009
Underworld, Camden, London
Jamie
Friday night ended up being one of those: one of those evenings where everything went just about perfectly. One of those where you find yourself a little bit sad, even as it’s happening, because you just wish that every day could be like this. We played football over lunch, but I still managed to eat a big bowl of soup at my desk in the afternoon and, to top that, we were sent home an hour early: excellent. All the more perfect, too, because that meant I could grab my ticket from All Ages before the show and save myself 50p. It meant we’d be on time, too, which was priceless, because, despite being on first, Kids Can’t Fly were the one band I really wanted to see and they were due on stage at 18:30 which is pretty loopy when you think about it.
Chips and I celebrated with a giant falafel wrap and then went to hang about and annoy strangers by loitering for ages right in the middle of a very busy pavement. We’re both small, but got our fair share of tuts and sideways looks as we stood there trying to peek through the bars and spot when the doors opened. Needless to say, this meant we were first in: the floors still smelt of polish (I know, it surprised me too) and there were a lot more staff than there were of us. All very surreal.
Kids Can’t Fly, as stated, were on first, and started off playing The Vicious Circle.. to five people. It’s harsh on them, as an undoubtedly great band, to be put on so early, even on such an excellent bill. Little matter, though, as knees and then shoulders and feet start to jig about straight away. By the end of the first song the rest of our mates had shown up, and, all of a sudden, I’m not so shy. I know, I know, only hard when I’m with my mates, blah blah blah.
KCF’s gloriously epic take on pop-punk is at once deliciously retro, loaded with vintage pop hooks, and yet bigger and more melodic in a way that is so much cooler now. On record, the attention to arrangements and the sheer quality of their songs is uplifting, but tonight, in concert, even at 19:00 (or whatever it was when they went on) they are nothing short of formidable. These melodies are infectious, and their harmonies just soar. It’s also the loudest I’ve heard a “support” act play in the Underworld, and there’s still only about twenty people here. That’s a crying shame, because anyone who got let out late or only turns up to see American headlining bands missed out on a treat.
Ryan cheekily asked us for a “two man circle pit”, and duly got it. It was basically us sprinting around like loons, but, to these tunes, it almost felt like I was going to take off. No pun intended. It’s been a long week and, despite the falafel, I’m pretty knackered. Sometimes spinning even a little makes you feel like you’re about to fall over and it lasts for ages and ages. That’s what this was like. And the spinning thing did actually happen at one stage.
Tune In and She Called Shotgun from their newer EP Strength in Numbers are both in the set, alongside a few new songs that are just lush. There’s a cover of Less Than Jake’s A.S. A.O.K. as well, in case they could get any more perfect.
The room’s filled up a lot by the time Kids Can’t Fly finish off with She Called Shotgun, and us early birds are exhilarated, a little punch drunk from all the running, and, with lungs gasping for the musty warm air and eyes still looping the loop, it’s as much as we can do to stumble still and whoop a little bit in appreciation. It’s the least the guys deserve.
Bananatown did want to have a quick chat with Kids Can’t Fly after their set, but, having resolved some personal crises and watched the JB Conspiracy, we didn’t get a chance. Keep your peepers out for that interview soon..
Anti Vigilante are something of a contrast to Kids Can’t Fly, but seriously good fun nonetheless. Josh Waters-Rudge last week called Random Hand “the UK’s premier skacore act”, but Anti Vigilante are on the up and deserve to be.
Like Random Hand, (and Nofx, sometimes, and a bit like Beat the Red Light, among others, Anti Vigilante are a four-piece, with just the one brass instrument. Except in this case it’s a sax, so it’s woodwind, but you know what I mean, it’s a horn.
In places they’re peppy and skankable as well as snotty, and at times they’re dirty and full on and almost Oi, but really they’re a punk rock band at heart. For me at least.
It’s the first time I’ve seen them, but of course, I’d heard the hype. I do know Tabzy, after all. It’s well deserved: Anti Vigilante are a very good live band: they’re tight and have a good collection of songs that they enjoy playing, and they’re a pleasure to watch. Backing vocals are good, and nicely placed, riffs are just right, you can mosh and skank to them (but not at the same time) and they’ve got a sax. It’s top.
That clutch of bodies in the empty semi-circle at the front whirl around happily throughout, as Anti Vigilante rattle through a good length set list with minimal fuss. And then they’re gone. Quick as that.
It’s a while since I’ve seen The JB Conspiracy play live. I fell in love with them, at the Underworld, when they were Duff Muffin. It was right after the Solabeat Alliance split up, so I doubt I was the only one looking for a new favourite band. They seemed to sort of disappear, and came back as the JB Conspiracy. They still play Pipe Down, but sadly On the Beer doesn’t show up any more.
Instead, the new-look band are bigger and noisier, sharply dressed, and altogether a bit more “serious”. Pipe Down from the Eagle Eyes EP does get an outing tonight, but only as a sound check: van problems meant that the guys were late and had to soundcheck during the gig. That must be what kept Kids Can’t Fly waiting until 7 to go on. Good job, too. After that, the only other real oldie is The Patriot, also from Eagle Eyes.
“We haven’t played that for ages”, says Leek afterwards. “I hope it didn’t show”.
It didn’t show one bit: for a band with so many musicians and so much going on, the JB Conspiracy are ridiculously well-drilled, and super-tight at all times.
Tonight we’re treated to a few new songs amongst set made up mainly from the songs on This Machine, though This Machine itself is a notable omission. Rumour has it, by the way, that there’s a follow-up to This Machine on its way “soon”.
Tonight, though, it’s all fairly standard JB fare: horn driven, peppy, soulful ska punk with keyboards and that tasty old-school vibe that they’ve had nailed since pretty much forever.
The level they’ve practiced too means that live performances are often fairly similar to each other: the guys are a “serious” band these days, and focus on delivering a good, tight, super-danceable set. They do it very well, and there’s full on skanking pretty much start to finish. We are only a small crowd, but the extra space comes in handy, and we can make full use of it. Those of us in early are pretty tired, by the end of this, but it’s the happily worn-out sort of tired, like a well walked dog stretched out on a rug in front of an open fire dreaming of running after sticks.
That cosy dog, all belly-out and twitchy-paws, would probably enjoy the smell of crumpets and some gentle Bing Crosby, cold jazz, etc. We Are The Union would not hit the spot quite so much. “If you haven’t heard them”, Kids Can’t Fly had written to us, “think Less Than Jake meets Four Year Strong”. If that sounds ace, then WATU were not a disappointment.
Not much for the sleepy heads, though, and there are a few tired bodies around by this point. We Are The Union come out of the blocks fast: a bruising, straight-up take on the rock-with-horns thing more than a ska-punk band in my book. They’ve got a horn section, but they’re not ska. It’s more of an assault, much more in-your-face than a lot of the more melodic American stuff that’s around at the moment, but they’ve got the hooks, the songs and the level of ability that say that they could, and probably should, become as famous as major-label bands that sound similar, if not intense. I like Falloutboy, for example, but they could learn a few things from WATU.
Refreshingly, though, WATU come across as thoroughly genuine, down to earth guys who are delighted to be touring and playing their music. It’s the first time I’ve seen them, but they’ve brought a clutch of fans who clearly adore them and follow their every move. On this evidence, that clique should expand in to a decent-sized crowd very quickly, and, for all of the at-times-intimidating power behind their music that could almost scare a few away, their sound is just right for them to be packing out arenas, I reckon.
Tonight they’re on fire, moving the pit around at will and entertaining those of us too breathless, at the back, and more intent on skipping. As performers, We Are The Union dominate a stage and a room like bona fide rock stars: they’re totally in control, and yet as one with all of us, and take time to have a joke at the same time. And then they slay us all over again. I was pestering for a CD afterwards, put it like that. And I’ll be at another show. Phew.
Rebel Alliance Tour 2010
Posted by jamie on Feb 9, 2010
REBEL ALLIANCE TOUR
The Skints, Chris Murray, Mouthwash, Random Hand
Camden Underworld
30th January 2010
Jamie
At one point, Josh from the Skints stops to thank all of us “for coming out at 18.30 to watch all the bands. No one does that, so thank you for doing that”. He’s also mentioned, though, that “this isn’t our [the Skints'] headline set, you’ve seen four headline sets tonight”.
Like pretty much everything he’s said, this is all greeted with a huge cheer. The Skints are riding the crest of a wave right now and seem pretty much unstoppable, and this, after all, is a London show, so it’s almost to be expected that this dark little oven and its slimy, deliriously happy population would be in thrall throughout.
In saying what he did, though, Josh did have a point, of course. It does take a level of commitment for a whole crowd to be queuing outside and around a venue at that time of the evening. Perhaps it had to do with the size of the four bands on the bill: that comment bout there being “four headline sets” had it pretty much bang on: none of this was to be missed.
In a Rebel Alliance mailout, Sexy Neil “Neil” McMinn had stopped to thank the label’s fans for helping to make the label a real, living entity “and not just a logo we put on the back of SB6 records”. I guess it’s a turnout like this, and the others which have packed other venues up and down the country on this tour, and the commitment to be there for all the bands that gives the clearest evidence of this. That said, the fact that Rebel Alliance can tour without the Sonic Boom Six and pack venues like it has, and that this many bands of this calibre are willing not just to release records on this label but to tour in support of it and of each other, is a huge vote of confidence in what Rebel Alliance has come to stand for in such a short space of time. The Ruff Guide came out on Deck Cheese, remember.
The show, then. If you walk past the World’s End/Underworld on a regular basis, you’ll know that there is ALWAYS a queue of fun looking peeps outside in the afternoon and evening. When you get to be one of them, because it’s not a smelly metal night, it’s extra good fun. I was psyched before we even got in, and we were in early. I don’t just mean early because of the early doors, I do mean our crew were among the first inside. If you’ve just done the RBF/SB6 tour and not seen Adam (their merch guy), he’s on this tour. Rest easy, coastguards.
Random Hand have been chosen to open this show, and they’re on while it’s still filling up. For a short while we’re treated to the slightly surreal sight of the guys playing to a semi-circle of empty space, a line of punks waiting patiently for the opportunity to throw their bodies around in said space just beside it. The way Random Hand play, though, it gets you. Even from opening, it’s difficult, even if you wanted to, to stand still. Hands, feet, then legs and then whole bodies begin to move around. The benefit of hindsight, by the way, says this was about the only time there was room for whole bodies to properly move around at the front. It was more shoulder-to-shoulder smush after that.
By the time Anger Management becomes the band’s third song of the evening, faces are pointing out of the mash of jigging arms and legs, raised just enough to make a wolf-howl face to the “whoah-oh-oh” of the chorus. Random Hand’s dirty, metal-infused skacore is a perfect start to proceedings, and really good show in its own right. They’re a four-piece, if you haven’t seen them: drums, bass, guitar, samples, three vocalists and a trombone. It’s as good as it sounds, and a little bit nastier, and it’s very, very good fun to bounce around to.
Playing first, they pretty much just get on with it: there’s the odd joke abut them being Northerners, and, bizarrely, a request from Robin for everyone to take a step forward. Forward? You’re on the front of the stage, mate. Had we all done it, I’d have been standing on Tilston’s toes and Chips would practically have been backstage. The Underworld’s like that at the best of times and this must have sold out. What a giggle. So, as I said, Random Hand turn up and get on with getting the party started. It’s a set still heavy on Inhale, Exhale material and it still sounds really good. Given that there’s so much excellent and brand new music around at the moment, that says a lot for these songs, but it definitely works and the night has its first bruises. Those who got to move their feet in some actual real-life space on the dance floor did well, and the circle pit around the pillar “an Underworld trademark”, as Robin calls it, is always special, and, by this time in the set, is the only time we can see the floor, which didn’t last long in to Random Hand’s set and was extinct for the rest of the night after that. It did seem an odd move, for a while, to have them opening tonight but they’ve done an excellent job.
Mouthwash are on quickly afterwards. Before that, can I just point out, they’ve been playing Mike TV’s EP on a loop before the show and between the bands. That carries on for most of the night. Anyways, Mouthwash appear pretty quickly, and set about carrying on the show. Again there’s not much chat, a bit about how wonderful all the folk at Rebel Alliance are and a bit about their new merchandise. That’s pretty relevant, actually, because their new stuff has a giant picture of a sausage on a fork, and it looks really cool. Mouthwash’s set is excellent. They’re really popular here and it’s easy to see why: they’re really danceable and great fun to watch. The Underworld’s getting fuller and fuller and all of those bodies are bouncing and swaying around, singing along happily. The first time I saw Mouthwash I was delighted that London had a band like them: a group that actually sound like they’re from the UK and from a city, and set out to put the different range of influences that can come from a city as diverse as London in to a set of underground guitar songs. The songs are big, powerful things, and the riffs and basslines wash over us in waves, the whole room rocking like it’s being picked up and shaken like a tiny duck on the top of a choppy sea.
Since bursting on to the scene as a cheeky clutch of ska-punk oiks, Mouthwash went rather quiet for a bit but are now back, having evolved in to one of the UK’s most interesting bands and favourite live acts. These days they’re really imposing, with a huge stage presence, especially on home turf.
First off, their sound is dark, brooding, ominous, with a really menacing synth strongly evident. It’s probably wise, as it can’t be easy going on after Random Hand. It winds up, though, as more of an easy-going, almost reggae sort of an affair, heavy on sunshine and feel-good stuff, but still with that contemporary, urban, UK feel. Mouthwash go down an absolute treat, and their set is incredibly danceable. I haven’t had a chance to spend too much time with True Stories since its re-release on Rebel Alliance, but you can’t help but move yourself. Just as Ask and It Is Given is perhaps unrepresentatively dirtier than a lot of the songs they’re playing at the moment, so That Girl is surprisingly catchy, almost poppy, and takes full advantage of how many vocalists there are in the band. The gang vocals and harmonies are absolutely lush, and tonight they’re sung out by however many hundred of us are in there. Most of Mouthwash’s songs are between those two extremes, but appear tonight back to back as a good-time singalong as the Underworld gradually turns in to a bit of a Rebel love-in. Swung back and forth in waves after wave of Mouthwash’s grimy riffs and dirty beats, and peppered throughout by those vocals, the vibe at the end of this exactly that: a full on love-in. It’s made us all so happy, and, as the lights come back to the very dim that, in the Underworld, is as close to “on” that they ever get, there’s that stick-on, loonish grin on pretty much every face you can see around you.
Chris Murray is sensational. Another act who’s already headlined the Underworld, supported, in fact, by the Skints, who will play after him tonight, and backed by Jon Doyle on bass and Jamie Kyriakides on drums “and those oh-so-soulful lungs”, he’s also the originator of one-man acoustic ska in its current form. That’s no small deal when you think of how many acts have popped up in the UK playing solo and/or acoustic ska. In another sign of how much love there is for Rebel Alliance in this room, Jon and Jamie are both wearing the new Rebel Alliance label t-shirts. They look really nice, actually. I hadn’t been sure for a while.
Chris is a really affable, charming guy, and, despite his undoubted pedigree as a performer both with King Apparatus and as a solo artist, playing acoustic after the two sets we’ve just seen, bombastic as they were, can’t be easy even if it’s not as daunting for Chris Murray as it could be. Instead, his easy going charm has the room wrapped around his little finger. Chris’s first Rebel Alliance release, Chris Murray and Friends, features new recordings of some of his older songs. When I first watched Chris as a solo artist (in 2003, yeesh) he had a little, home-made looking disc called Six Songs, and the songs Ex-darling, Rocksteady and Heartache are all on that. There are three others, surprise, surprise. All three that I’ve named, though, are on his new record and each gets an outing tonight. Rocksteady, for the geeks, sees Jamie K given a different backing vocal, and it really, really works.
You can see a mile off that all three guys on stage are really enjoying this, and Chris is wearing a dirty great big grin. He just loves playing music, and its contagious. The mood is infectious, and it was great in the first place. It’s just been a great show. Chris Murray is excellent at controlling his crowd and steering the audience participation. Josh from the Skints appears on I Need Water. The crowd vocal is, perhaps, a teensy bit difficult to explain: “if you need help”, Chris advises, “..just follow Josh”. “I need water, I need love”, Josh sings, and the Underworld dutifully pipes up. It’s baking hot, and, shoulder to shoulder, now, we’re bobbing along as a deliriously happy room. Chris’s single Shades of the Same Colour has a video, of which part was shot in the Underworld. When he announces the song, a few voices pip up “I’m in it!”. If you look very closely, you can actually see me. I’m well proud of that, but too shy to tell Chris Murray when he’s right in front of me.
It’s a glorious show once again, Chris Murray holding the room effortlessly, and his songs, so many of them so excellent, just shine on a night like this. It just works. By the time he wraps up with the song Home, the air is full of hands, and choruses returned back to the band by the sea of snugly warm, sweat-shiny faces in front of them. Thinking back to it gives me a heavy sigh. Every time Chris Murray plays live, it’s just wonderful.
And so to the Skints. These guys just get better and better: musically, in concert and on record, have come so far so fast in recent times. Here, playing last at a hometown show on one of the bills to see this year, everything is set for them to come out and rinse this gig. That’s exactly what happens. Before the tour dates were finalised, the Underworld was set anyway for a Skints show. Right now, with the walls of this musty, dimly lit basement glistening with a thin layer of all of our sweat, the floor a carpet of busted plastic cups and the dancefloor and the backstage sort of rail bit where all the celebs like Jamie Jazz are hiding out, all shoulder to shoulder and bobbing even in the half silence (still mainly to the Mike TV CD), the stage, and I mean the metaphorical stage, not so much the actual stage, is set for a mega performance.
In the closed space, the climbing heat and the near dark, the Skints enter stage left and set about turning the whole place in to some sort of pulsating, darkened oven, but one that has basslines. This is incredible. A based heavily on Live.Breathe.Build.Believe, which the band have been playing live for some time, is perfect: a massive, riff-driven, reggae monster that has the whole place jumping as one. To be fair, you’ve no choice but to bounce: all of us are pinched between the people either side of us and the room, in rhythm, is a giant mess of trainers on beer cups. Contemplations of the Modern Rude Boy, Murderer and Culture Vulture are, predictably, gobbled up by a room now deliriously happy. What really takes tonight on to a different planet, though, is the collective gasp of sheer joy that greets the song Bright Girl. As the realisation reaches different people one by one, you can almost feel the room get happier, as if little lights were switching on. Except it’s still dark. It’s as if the whole place was one giant mash of pushing, swaying shoulders and stomping feet, and everyone is singing. Immense. Then, for an extra treat, and you might have seen this before, but tonight, it’s better than ever, the song becomes Inner Circle’s Sweat, met with another roar and its “a la la la la long” refrain bellowed back at the band, who return to Bright Girl, again happily welcomed back.
This show gets better and better, every song, every solo cheered, and the room constantly swaying. I admit, after some guy dressed like N-Dubz wriggled in front of us it got too intense in the very middle, and I watched the rest from the side. It was still packed and still moving out there, as the band glide effortlessly through an excellent set of songs, in which everything is perfect. Eventually, exhausted, it’s all wrapped up to a rapturous response. For a few moments, nobody can actually move and even when there’s a tiny bit of room it takes a while for anyone to take a step in a direction because just about everybody has lost their mates. It’s all been a bit of a love in anyway: at one point Josh points out that the Skints’ first Underworld set was played to six people, all of whom are in the room tonight. You’d be hard pushed to find anyone you know, mind. As the lights get gradually a tiny bit brighter, blinking, sweat soaked bodies stumble around the clearing floor meeting and hugging up to each other. Mostly, to people they arrived with, but a few tongues did get swapped, by the way: it was basically like one giant aphrodisiac, after all.
Shivering, blinking, and impossibly happy, we make our way to various drink and food joints, delighted at what we’ve all just seen. My legs are like a baby Bambi’s, so getting anywhere takes a little longer, and a lot of people are the same. Excellent stuff: one of those nights to end all nights.
Thank you, also, to the folk at Rebel Alliance for keeping a four-band, Saturday night London show to £9 a ticket. That’s proper punk, guys. Respect.
25th & 29th January: Sonic Boom Six, Big D and Reel Big Fish
Posted by jamie on Feb 2, 2010
Sonic Boom Six / Big D & the Kids Table
w/ Reel Big Fish
Birmingham Academy (25th) & Camden KoKo (29th) January, 2010
Jamie
Ok, let’s get something straight here: The truth is, really, we were here for the Sonic Boom Six (again). Be that as it may, though, Reel Big Fish’s ability to draw big crowds, take other established headline bands as support, along with their huge catalogue of brilliant good-time party songs, make this show a must see. Even at £20 (thanks to ticketmaster), who’d turn their nose up at Big D and the SB6 as supports?
Not many. Birmingham’s new Carling Academy was packed on a Monday, and it’s a lot bigger than Islington’s. The KoKo shows were capacity on both nights. We did the Birmingham show on a lads’ night out and it could scarcely have gone better. Friday, with the full posse, girls included, was ace too. KoKo could do with sorting its stairs out – and its only gents, right at the top, caused some amusing traffic jams where the unfortunate among us got blocked in at the urinals (but no one weed on us). They also had a club night on afterwards which meant that the Sonic Boom Six were originally scheduled on stage at the ridiculous hour of 18:15. Lines of us were still snaked around the building at nearer to 7, so it wasn’t all bad, but we were turfed out at 22:30 so that the Florence and the Machine brigade could have their tepid, spineless indie club night afterwards. Good luck with that one: it’s £5 a beer in there and it’s not even on draught.
The indestructible Sonic Boom Six (Laila’s words, not mine), opened on both nights and on both nights they were the best band on show. Minus Ben C on vocals and guitar, it was a strange and interesting experience to see his verses shared by Barney and Laila. Ben’s words “Went and bought the tape the next day” and “Spit with every word that they say”, etc, just sound different, of course, but the band have coped admirably. Obviously not all of their songs are ready for the new line up, so the shorter opening set might have been a bonus there. Not that it was something that any of us wanted to end. Everyone was down on time for this and the place went OFF. It was insane down there and awesome to be a part of. A big slice of City of Thieves is still the focus of the guys’ set, with the opener, Back 2 Skool and The Concrete We’re Trapped Within (It’s Yours) opening the show. Sound of a Revolution is in afterwards, and Through the Eyes of a Child
Oh, and the set. The SB6 were incredible. Hung over (on Friday), without Ben and, on Friday, without Matt, and on first they still had a sell out crowd flying all over the place. It’s a short, sharp set and they get on with it without bantering us. It puts meaning to the phrase “all killer, no filler”. This, I guess, is what the Reading/Leeds festival crowds got, but, the last RBF tour aside, I haven’t seen SB6 not headline since 2003 (with Whitmore). When Barney said they know how to start a party, we now know what he meant. Those rooms went from flat to all out super fast. Laila introduces Sound of a Revolution as a homage to Rage Against the Machine, which is greeted with a huge cheer for Killing in the Name’s climb to Christmas number 1 here in the UK. The song, with the Big D lads on horns, is a particular highlight, along with Through the Eyes of a Child. Strange Transformations, another gem from the band’s most recent record City of Thieves, which, for me, is one of the band’s very best tracks, is also a real crowd pleaser. The focus is very much on the band’s newer material, much of it from City of Thieves and the last track, Piggy in the Middle, is the first to come from 2006’s Ruff Guide to Genre Terrorism album. The new songs are excellent and SB6 deliver them with a real hunger. It’s testament to this that so many other great songs aren’t picked tonight and both shows are still frantic, those of us on the barrier getting squished in rhythm as the bit behind gets bigger and bigger and rocks giddily back and forth, mashing us all in the process. This could, and perhaps should, be a headline set. Sonic Boom Six have got everything and kick the night off with a bang. The lights are lifted on a blinking, breathless pack of gasping, delighted bodies. That so much of the night is still to come is, frankly, a little bit daunting, but we’re all still hungry for it.
A real surprise on this tour is just how good Big D and the Kids Table have got. If that sounds like some sort of obvious non-statement, then perhaps you haven’t been to this tour. Because we at Bananatown are already huge fans. It’s just that I’ve not really seen the Fluent in Stroll material toured before. On both nights, Big D were absolutely superb, even by their own standards. Steady Riot, Noise Complaint and then Fluent in Stroll open the set and it’s immediately clear that, without losing anything that made them them in the first place, they’ve really added a lot to their sound. The obvious example is that they’re touring the UK with a group of backing singers: two in Birmingham, and three in London after one flew in especially for the last show of this tour. I don’t know how far Boston is, and I could google it, but you get my point: it was well worth it, whatever. Something about their sound has become slightly more old-school. I was dubious when the grapevine told me about what they were doing here, not from a lack of trust, just that there wasn’t anything that needed changing, and the difference was so striking. They’ve totally pulled it off, though, and it makes for a really stunning set. Think about exactly how the Fluent in Stroll material should be performed live and that’s basically exactly what they’ve done. And they’ve nailed it. All the backing vocalists are female, by the way. Matching dresses, for the last show, in London, were a nice touch and the classic synchronized sways and clicks that choirs and backing vocal groups have been doing for 50 years made the ladies look as smooth as a very smooth thing. And they can really, really sing: it definitely adds to the set and really enhances all the songs on show. Hayley sings a tune to herself for good measure, too.
Big D’s set is basically one big, shaking, joyous singalong. Although it’s a shoutalong for two types who wriggled in in front of us at KoKo. That’s annoying at the best of times, but the girl was wearing leopard print and one the boy took his backpack in to the pit. Please, if you’re reading and you do that, never do it again. It just takes up everybody’s room. To stop a squashed girl from having angry words, I butted in and put it over the barrier for him with our coats and that. Hugs all around: it was that kind of night. In Birmingham, where there’s a lot more space, doors were a bit later and it’s not hotter than a pasty oven, we can move around a bit more. At KoKo it was just a big, baking hot squash in to the rail. All good fun, mind.
And so to Reel Big Fish. More recently there have been a few line-up changes, but, like them or loathe them, you know what you’re going to get, and neither of these shows are any different. Reel Big Fish come to the UK once a year and play the songs they’ve been playing for years. The reason this works is that they’ve got a huge back catalogue of really good party songs and they play them very well in concert. They do, as usual, have two excellent support acts: for SB6 and Big D read Suburban Legends and Random Hand last year, and SB6 and the Streetlight Manifesto the year before.
I saw them last year in Leeds, and, to tell the truth, by their standards they were a bit disappointing. After that, and, without a new record out since last time, and no original songs since 2007 I admit I was weary of this tour. Were it not for Big D and Sonic Boom Six on the bill I’d never have done two dates, and might’ve missed it out completely.
It’s testament to the pulling power that Reel Big Fish have, though, that, even though any of those could headline a venue of this size, they’re up for supporting. It also guarantees an excellent night’s skanking for all concerned.
Yes, Reel Big Fish have been playing these songs for ages. And I do mean ages: Trendy, I Want Your Girlfriend to Be My Girlfriend, Snoop Dog, Baby and Beer are all on Everything Sucks, which was released in 1995. But the reason that Reel Big Fish can keep touring this material is that it is that good, and brilliant for getting down to. That and the fact that they’re very, very good at playing live.
A packed out room waits for what feels like an age, only seeing the odd guitar-tech come out and say “one, two” in to a row of microphones before the headline act finally show. And this time they’re awesome. Everything is almost exactly as you’d expect, the usual set, with Sell Out first, The Set-Up (You Need This), Ban the Tube Top and Down in Flames. Those two, by the way, are probably my favourite RBF songs, but anyway. Laila K guests as the girl on She Has a Girlfriend Now and has an absolute riot with it. Especially on Friday, she’s hilarious, all jigging, skanking feet while she’s singing and just bouncing and milking the applause while Aaron and Scott sing the guy’s part. Everything Sucks, Your Guts (I Hate ‘em), and Snoop Doggy Dogg are all huge hits before You Don’t Know, with an epic drum solo by their new drummer The Rabbit which makes the whole room gasp on Monday night, and even needs an extra drummer for a little bit, before the band finish with Take on Me. They’ve surely played that song more times than A-ha by now. An encore is inevitable, and the songs really pick themselves from what hasn’t been played before. I’m sure we’ve all been here a million times before, but, while they can still pull this off, it’s daft not to like Reel Big Fish in concert. It’s just good fun. Another F.U Song, Suburban Rhythm, with all its many versions, and the “Masters of all musical styles” bit, etc, etc, and then Kiss Me Deadly. Whoah, that’s the three song encore. And they haven’t played Beer. Oh, there it is. Woot woot. Entirely predictable, but, if we’re honest, that’s part of the fun. They’ve got great songs, and they play them very well. It goes down a storm, needless to say.
