James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
Not only were the headliners worse than Miss Nash, they also failed to replicate the inventiveness of the dance punk stylings of their support. To My Boy, armed only with overdriven guitars, a couple of samplers and a strobe pulled out some crunchy pop gems, sounding like Duran Duran having an elegant fist-fight with Talking Heads. On speed. And they had a stage presence to match; lead singer Jack Snape caressed the mike and leaped mechanically around the stage when freed from his guitar, and instrumentalist and backing vocalist Sam White pulled the kind of stances that Lenin would approve of. Check out their myspace here.
After a brief break, just time for us to decide on a stylish way to wear the promotional tiger masks that were being handed out (a traditional "over the face" was chosen in the end), Pull Tiger Tail took to the stage. Initially their concoction of anthemic indie and electropop was infectiously exciting, helped by the fact that the PTT boys aren't exactly hard on the old eyes. However, a few songs in, some cracks began to show.
The attention seeking activities of the bassist lead The Yorker music team to participate in a game we called "Watch Jonbon", involving starving him of attention by staring at lead singer Ardere (who has an uncanny resemblance to a certain classic American rocker)
Davo McKenzie-McConville, on keyboards and bass, seemed sure of himself to the point of arrogance, his artrock posturing appearing fake and cliched. When interacting with vocalist and guitarist Marcus Ardere things seemed strained, with catty asides and a lack of the knowing glances that usually appear in a band with two frontmen. The attention seeking activities of McKenzie-McConville lead The Yorker music team to participate in a game we called "Watch Jonbon", involving starving the bassist of attention by staring at Ardere (who has an uncanny resemblance to a certain classic American rocker). Unfortunately neither band member seemed to notice, but it kept us entertained as what had initially sounded like an interesting take on alternative-pop descended into generic indie numbers. The posters covering the walls of Fibbers compared the band to We Are Scientists, which is fairly accurate, only Pull Tiger Tail lack the humour that makes the Scientists enjoyable.
In Andere PTT have an attractive frontman, with a great voice and a slight bashfulness that is welcome next to the studied cool of McKenzie-McConville. However, outside of new single "Hurricanes" and set closer and stand-out track "Let's Lightning", the band need to be more creative, more experimental. If they can learn to break the indie-pop mold they find themselves in they can begin to justify the arrogance of their bassist, who seems already to have decided that he is in the coolest band in the country.
