James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
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Yet it seemed that – like my failure to achieve the look I was going for – Guillemots’ decision to combine a musically accompanied short film event with a full-blown gig resulted in a rather confused atmosphere. Whilst I began the evening in the belief that my dizzy state of Romantic bliss extended throughout the chatty, reclining crowd, it soon became clear that a large proportion of them were not discussing the voyeuristic aspects of the first film – they just weren’t interested. Like an average support act, the half hour display of Future Shorts to the varying sounds of Guillemots own musical scoring rallied a somewhat indifferent reaction from the mob. Without even a round of applause for the band at the end of the film show, the lack of response was deafening.
Luckily, though, things picked up once the screen was taken down. As a troupe of suspiciously identical Fyfe-looking roadies appeared to set up the equipment, seats were abandoned and the crowd got tighter. By the time the band emerged to a throng of cheers, I was squashed up against an admiringly brazen girl brandishing a sign saying “Fyfe I want your babies in my wombs (I have two)”.
Opening with the first single from their latest album ‘Red’, the band soon had the Yorkshire crowds riled up and screaming “Get over it!” at the top of their lungs. Carrying on their set with a succession of similarly up-beat, liberally synthesized songs, it seemed to come as a bit of a shock to some members of the audience when the tempo was taken down a notch – one man clearly missing the band’s hint for everyone to be quiet during a love song by screaming “Fucking tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuune!” in a broad northern accent as soon as the melody was recognisable.
But the reflective mood didn’t last long. Despite a slightly reluctant pause from the crowd when asked “Do you want to hear some new stuff?”, the band pushed on with a performance of several yet unreleased tracks – each one displaying the unavoidably heavier mood of their more recent compositions. And while many fans may have experienced an initial disillusionment with Guillemots’ decision earlier this year to move in a less orchestrally eclectic direction, you couldn’t help but feel happy to see guitarist MC Lord Magrao finally get excited about something. That being said, nothing got people dancing quite as much as the old stuff – the stocky instrumental sounds of Trains to Brazil and Sao Paulo being a refreshing break from the single clef 'organic' tunes that seem to be the answer to every advertiser's prayers at the moment.
As the gig drew to a dustbin-lid bashing close, the crowd’s roar for an encore summoned an apparently coy Fyfe Dangerfield back on stage, declaring “I haven’t done this for a while,” before whipping out his Casiotone and silencing the crowd with the mesmerising Blue Would Still Be Blue. This solo action was later repeated in Dusk, where the singer gave an impromptu performance in an open mic night to a lucky crowd of late night drinkers, with what looked like his own family cheering him on. My friends and I, having reached our limits, admitted defeat and left before last orders, nonetheless screaming like wailing banshees all the way home that, for one evening, York had been the centre of something so wonderfully quixotic.
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