Eagle-eyed Diary of a Pandaman viewers may have noticed one giant oddity with this column: not every band witnessed – and bear in mind we have resolved to see 365 live sets in 2024, that’s a tractorload of bands – gets reviewed or even fleetingly mentioned in furry despatches. Why so? Well, some live acts we see are terrible and not worthy of yours or our time. And a lot of new acts are Quite Good but Not Terribly Interesting, which is a bit of a snag when it comes to thinking up a choice selection of passionately pithy split infinites with which to describe them.
This is even more paramount after the feeding frenzy of last month’s USA Pandaman special, when we could barely move for all the excellent American actettes. Back at street level in Blighty we manage to see no more than 30 live sets throughout April, and many of those live sets have already been abandoned to the exit of the rear of the back of beyond in the Pandaman’s memory bank.
Luckily, the UK underground live scene still delivers a life of intriguing surprises, even if those surprising intrigues occur with roughly one in six live turns we witness. Enter GREEN STAR shining brightly at the Old Blue Last in Shoreditch. Rather excellently, Green Star are an absolute riot of colour, that colour being very black. They are nervy purveyors of a kinda sexy clinging / clanging post-shoegaze-rock with rather good cheekbones and some rather admirable rushes of crushing guitar saucery. Fun isn’t the word. For fans of Sonic Youth, Swervedriver, Dinosaur Jr and very dense sound explosions from 1991, as they say in the trade.
Speaking of old school sonic wranglings, over at the Sebright Arms in Hackney the gloriously laboriously-named GLASSHOUSE RED SPIDER MITES are three creepingly weary musos lurking between the goalposts marked shoegaze and post-math rock. They are very solemn, and very slow, and very much the kind of thing the NME live desk would have killed itself over in 1997 as they represent the missing link between Rothko and Billy Mahonie. And when they get groovy they sound a wee bit like Chapterhouse. And when they end the compelling set sounding furiously fragile and understated they somehow blend Slint with Simon & Garfunkel. What more do you want from me???
More words of wonderment? Okay then. Sticking to the nostagic theme back in 1995 a band called PREEN would have lived in a gutter on Camden Parkway dressed in adidas, tightfit glam clobber and come armed with a fey singer in a feather boa. Today’s version of Preen supporting at the Lexington in Kings Cross is a rather more sedate, if not downright serene, affair, all polite Fleetwood Mac folkie twists with lots of melodic stashes and old school ‘taches. At one point we swear we spy the glacial spirit of Sally Oldfield floating around the venue – it’s all that dainty.
Headliners PUSHPIN do that lovely tribal melodic thing with violin and flute and triple-layered harmonies which is heroically organic and oddly reminiscent of really, really early James. At another point the collective get so angular and funky they bring out the clanking cowbell with a nod towards Talking Heads, at another the communal vibes and general life-affirming vibrancy get all Arcade Firey. Did we mention there’s a little bit of Peter Gabriel going on here as well? We have now.
Back at the same Lexington venue the surprises keep on coming. Enter COSMORAT, who are jolly and echoey and all Altered Images bounciness and Toni Basil handclaps and quite obviously tremendous fun. There are lots of gurgles and hoo-hoos, like Life Without Buildings, but then there are ripples of lovely guitar flowing over some thoroughly tough rhythms.
I blame singer Taylor. She is from Pittsburgh and she appears to be dressed for a round of golf with Poirot circa 1935. She’s the one driving the insanely upbeat beats onwards but she’s also always ready to collapse inwards. There is a powermad power ballad during which Taylor sings, “I wish this was over / I wish I was sober” like she’s halways through a hungover breakfast with Tiffany. All the mall things, etcetera.
There is a gentler degree of exuberance from headliners GOOD NEIGHBOURS, who’ve been sending the A&R radar into a veritable tizzy of late with some sensationally staggering streaming numbers. You can see why too, as this, their third ever show, is an admirable exercise in dealing with stadium-sized pop nuances in a (relatively) tiny venue. It’s a super supple sound, all very lush and plush and slinky with a nice deadpan delivery.
But there’s more to this than meets the showbiz eye: the two main protagonists are Oli Fox and Scott Verrill, both of whom have been through the turbulent major label mill before; the two previous Good Neighbours shows were at the Sebright and the Victoria in Dalston, not the most obvious toilet circuiting venues for a sound this shiny and commercial; and for a night when all the music industry stars are so clearly aligning there is an admirable degree of humility to proceedings, not least when Oli delivers an utterly charming monologue about how ‘Home’ was written for everyone suffering during the pandemic. Cue some euphoric woah woahs and excellent whistling, and cue another step to the Very Big Time. That’s one thing this month which would not be a surprise.
THE PANDAMAN’S 2024 TOTAL LIVE SETS: 216