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COG Review - 7/5/10 (Blighters/Jamie Ley/Gadsdens)

Club Night Review

Friday 7^th May at the Lexington

Bands: Blighters, Jamie Ley, Gadsdens

Long reviews get tiresome to read, I understand, so here’s a new experimental format for a review of a gig with three bands at the Lexington:

Opening Act - Gadsdens:

Ah, the Gadsdens. Oh, the Gadsdens. That’s me fawning over them. They’re an outrageously talented pop band capable of lifting a gig to a near-religious experience. Jody Gadsden’s tear-verging voice is a divine gift in and of itself, but add to that the timeless melancholy and classic pop songs they craft, and you have a band with the potential to be one of the most powerful cross-over forces in British music. Their pop is outstanding, but their melancholy stuff is REM on a sad, poignant day, and that’s saying a lot. An effortless set, with an encore that was demanded by the crowd. An encore for an opening act. That says it all.

Main Support – Jamie Ley (pronounced Lee):

A predictable product of the Leeds scene (which is excavating long-buried treasures from folk and grunge, and now country), Jamie Ley (he insists it’s pronounced Lee – he’s very particular about that) is a pretend cowboy singing pretend lonely cowboy songs in pretend American accents about girls called ‘Suzy’. And you know what? It’s shit-hot, motherfucker. Oh yeah. In reality, there are only two genres of music – good and bad. Jamie is a quality songwriter, with class and beauty in his compositions. He suffered because in any indie gig, if you’re not loud enough to force people to shout at the top of their voices in order to hear each other, they’ll just chat away and ignore you, but despite the underwhelming atmosphere the quality shone away for anyone listening. Encouraging stuff. Man, Leeds must be a great place to grow up these days. You know, apart from being in the North.

Headline Act: Blighters:

They look like annoying skinny-jeaned, tight-vested NME twats. The lead singer looks like Luke Goss from his Bros days, and they played the style of music expected from their looks. It was loud, high-tempo lads’ music from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’, with punk and 80s pop influences. It was very good indeed. Seriously. ‘The Exam’ is just a classic pop song with a great hook for a chorus, ‘Boys in Motion’ shows that they have a more sophisticated, knowledgeable grasp on 80s pop than at first glance, but essentially they sound like a typical 80s-copying contemporary indie pop band, of which there are thousands, only a little tighter, and with a keener ear for a good tune than most. Once again, the word ‘quality’ comes to mind. They rounded off the night very well indeed.

 

There. No abstract narratives, no jokes, no gimmicks. Hmmmm. I think I’ll return to the old format next time round. Experiment status: Fail.

Muhammad Odeh