- Independent UK Promoting

COG Review - 19/7/08 (Foxes/Ryes/Gin Riots/Edgar Prais)

Club Night Review

Saturday 19^th July at the Metro, Oxford Street

Bands: The Foxes, The Ryes, The Gin Riots, Edgar Prais

Kids! Kids! Wanna show off your mad dancing’ skillz, wicked stylz and supr-kool threads with your gr8 m8s? Fuck off this is not for you. For sane people who have never, ever done ‘sumthing for the lulz’, come down to the Metro on the first and third Saturdays of the month, where you can join like-minded people to revel in excellent indie from the best up-and-coming bands in the country.

On this particular night the first band to bask in the revellers’ expectant gazes were Aberdeen-based pop threesome Edgar Prais, who’d brought along an extra guitarist and talented solo artist Claire M Singer for keyboard/cello duties. The first song they played was a wishy-washy pop affair sounding as if it was comprised entirely of famous middle-eights. You know that ‘slightly louder, faster and more emotive’ crescendo at the end of middle-of-the-road American rock songs? Like the end of Bon Jovi’s ‘It’s My Life’ or Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’? They sound like that all the time.

They’re slower, simpler and over-sing more than most bands. They should be hated, but each note and lyric is played or sung with such personality and thoughtfulness that their presence is that of an established band like the Kooks or Razorlight (but less faecal in nature).

There’s something charmingly ‘stuck in the 90s’ about them, as if they’re blissfully unaware of the hundreds of other bands doing exactly the same thing. They play with a passion borne out of innocence that could only come from living in a remote area of Scotland. It’s tempting to say they have an element of Del Amitri style mainstream appeal, but that would be a tad harsh. On who? You decide.

Their music is akin to the Brightlights if they’d started a decade ago, but it’s the singer’s voice that was the most conventional thing about them. You couldn’t pick it out of a line-up of karaoke drunks, but he’s clearly learnt to sing and uses it to its potential. The cello, as expected, was not used often enough, which is a shame as it’s one of the things that saves them from formulaic-pop-band obsoletism. Their final song, ‘On Our Way Home’, wasn’t bad at all, and in fact none of their songs were. They’re not the greatest band in the world, but they have consistency and an unmistakable presence.

The Gin Riots came on after them, a typical indie foursome clad in typical indie fashions, churning out that two-tone/mod/London punk/pop that we typically call indie these days. The first impression was that of less consistent, but at times more impactful younger brothers of the Fratellis.

Their musical prowess is over-reliant on the virtuoso drumming of Jack McGruer. Without him you couldn’t pick them out of a line-up of Libertines fans who took music lessons (you can see the ‘line-up’ theme building up, can’t you?). Repetitive one-liners aside, when they slow the pace they affect more personality in their music, as if they have a sound of their own rather than just pilfering little bits from every famous British band in the last 5 years.

They do that ‘repeat one line over and over to slightly faster music than the rest of the song’ as an ending to most of their tracks, which is horribly annoying, but it has to be said that the end product isn’t too bad, and they’re certainly excellent to have as second support.

But the band that followed them were of a different class. The Ryes are a band already making waves, just checking out their myspace friends raises a few eyebrows. They started ‘papapapa-rarara’-ing to a packed crowd of their fans. For the uninitiated, they’re a five-piece happy-happy-joy-joy band Radio 1 audiences would eat up by the bucketful. A hetero Scissor Sisters, an indie Mika, Hamfatter with more guitar – they sound as good, and bad, as all of the above. The catchiness of their songs and the quality of lead singer Paul Canning’s vocals are their trump cards, and what trump cards they are.

No matter your initial reservations, like a 6-year-old with more curiosity than fear you’ll accept their sickly sweet offerings and before you know it you’re in the back of their van, being violated with up-tempo indie pop songs in front of a video camera. They make you want to tap your foot to their sugary tunes and run away screaming ‘Mummy the bad man showed me his willy’ all at the same time.

You know where all their songs are going, but they do it so professionally you find yourself enjoying them. Altogether they’re a very good band, and their banter with the crowd wasn’t bad either. Despite the fact that you wouldn’t be able to pick it out of a line-up of 80s pop hits for girls, their last song, and current single ‘How Come Loretta’, was an incredibly lively and really, really catchy tune that’s already doing the rounds on mainstream radio. Its stark happiness is instantly recognisable, and got the Ryes one of the loudest cheers the Metro’s had in a while.

If the Ryes are a band making waves, the Foxes are developing tsunamis with global disaster potential. Well, not global, just Britain and Ireland really. And maybe Guernsey. With defined lead guitar, a high standard of musicianship and great song structures, the Foxes are a quality melodic rock band in the Strokes-meets-Bluetones-in-a-blues-bar mould. There’s a cohesion to them that gives them an edge over other bands; and edge they could use to dominate the scene over the next few years.

There’s also a funk aspect to them, as if they’ve been influenced by 60s and 70s acts as much as contemporary artists. Indeed, their well-rooted sound makes you think they’ve been drinking at the very source of Rock’s mineral spring, leaving lesser bands to sip the dregs. They command the stage like a band that’s actually adding something to the genre, rather than recycling old Brit Pop acts. A band that both makes an impact and grows on you, the Foxes proved on this night that the praise they’ve been receiving by a media already getting carried away is at least partially deserved.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of their lead guitarist Jonno Bretman. In many ways he makes the band, lifting them from mediocrity to excellence with moments of skill all too rare in indie bands, not just the in the UK but everywhere. The one negative thing about them is the promotion of Trauma Town, one of their weakest songs, as their main single. No doubt it’s been chosen for its provocative and witty lyrics ‘I don’t want to use public transport cos it’s full of twats, full of twats’. About as provocative as Richard Whiteley, and not nearly as lively. This kind of thinking makes me want to chemically castrate anybody in music marketing, and poison their immediate families’ water supply as a deterrent to others. ‘Mummy, why am I pale and my bones break so easily?’

‘Because Daddy thought the Ting Tings were more commercially viable than Once A Thief.’

Now that’s provocative. I’m off to write a ‘you couldn’t pick them out of a line-up of…’ quotations book. Wish me luck. Until next time,

Muhammad Odeh