Being perfectly frank, sometimes the Pandaman can be too much of a gigging smartarse for his own good. Springtime brings with it the essence of new act chaos in the shape of the great escape to The Great Escape in Brighton, but this gamut of freshfaced fruitiness is compounded by our recent diaries which have already namechecked a few handfuls of the hottest new bands from the winds of SXSW to the wilds of South London.
The seaside fun inevitably comes with a seaside order of political intrigue – after the US military involvement in Austin it’s Barclaycard who face the musicians’ ire. The local branch is smeared in red paint, the Lanes are plastered with Fake Escape posters pushing spoof names like SOURGHOSTWRITER, CLOUT CHASER and NEPO BABY.
Some people opt for a more positive form of action: it’s the night before it all kicks off and OPUS KINK are headlining a very sold out Palestine benefit show at the Green Door Store. We saw them in the heat of TGE 2023 and felt pretty much pummelled by a skronking brass onslaught. Here, behind the green door, they deliver an entirely more complex but no less compelling set of soulful indie chaos.
There’s a de riguer scuzzy Fat White Family affair going down, a clatteringly ashen-faced communal happening driven along at a hectic pace by hollowed out singer Angus Rogers. Like the wayward lost son of a preacherman, he propels the sixpiece forwards into twisted new sonic dynamics. The fearsome skronk is still present and correct – in the olden days Opus Kink would quite surely have been on Stiff Records and out on tour with Ian Dury and his Blockheads – but there are extravagant showbiz vibes, some suspiciously beautiful keyboard patterns and an overriding sense of fun. The joint only stops jumping when Angus tells everyone to sit down so he can tower above them, arms outstretched, during ‘Crucify’. Apparently he’s playing with a couple of fractured ribs. No wonder he looks so bloody furious.
A quick Thursday lunchtime dash around the non-Fake Escape shows then: NO WINDOWS hilariously play The Secret Comedy Club, a furtive basement venue in the middle of the Lanes…with no windows. Boom! They are fragrant Scots with a DIY set-up and, in singer Verity, a charming centrifugal force. We hear a wee touch of jingle jangle, a slinkily splashy nod towards The Sundays and Camera Obscura, but by golly we’ve been proved wildly wrong before. A passing expert tells us the guitarist is actually a genius.
Around the corner PORCHLIGHT are squeezed onto the Black Lion stage, flushed with the vigour of youth and fleshed out by the odd nod to ‘Weird Fishes’. They’re bewitching and twitching, building a dreamy head of steam with layers of keys and guitars before going full on techno carnage – always a rare treat at 2.23pm in the afternoon. Uptown at the UnBarred brewery meanwhile (free pint for anyone who makes it all the way), KEO are epic and punchy and all positive vibes. They’re a crunchy indierock quartet, maybe a baby Bryan Adams family next to Sam Fender’s Springsteenage kicks, and heaving with self-belief. A passing expert tells me their guitarist is a genius. This is catching.
As we say this time every year, The Great Escape isn’t the only showcasing show in town: we love a wee live collective stuffed with nubile new acts, and few showcasing shows are as consistently cool as the ones promoted by the So Young gang. At The Social in London’s West Endshire they flaunt a terrific four bander affair opened by TOOTH, a chewy youthful four piece, with chunky Wedding Present guitars, bruised Chameleons basslines and wired vocals. It’s all very hectic and petulant, but very cheeky and charmingly deilvered. We can even detect a touch of Adorable in there – there’s one for your indie mums.
Down at Brixton Electric ENGLISH TEACHER are arriving at the other end of the career curve with a sold out show on Island Records, but their leftfield inclinations are searingly apparent: the set starts with theatrical papier-mâché machinations and the intellectual indie noises and Lily’s gulping vocals suggest a band who in the ‘80s would surely have been on 4AD, and in the ’90s would have almost certainly rocked out on Rough Trade. ‘Broken Biscuits’ is certainly plucked out of the jar marked poet punk.
But then there’s the cello! Of course! Because theirs a fantastical world, a marvellous universe. As they say in the trade, English Teacher have the avante and indeed they also have the garde, but at the same time they are deliciously unguarded. They do an utterly lovely softie with keys and splashy jazz drums which ends like Richard Hawley or Mercury Rev or some other utterly lovely softies. It is fruity, it is out there, it even features ELO squiggles, which isn’t easy for us to type. And then they launch into an array of utterly sumptuous soul type ballads. It’s hard to be intimate with 2000 people but they make it their dream date: there are orchestral manoeuvres and there are pukka proggy powerrocking outbursts and there are confetti bombs and hyper emoticons, as befits a celebratory final night of the tour. Oh, and ‘The Best Tears Of Your Life’ is Macy Gray singing Pixies. In short: really quite good.
If English Teacher are giddy after their biggest show thus far in their brief career, consider the dizziness of THE PRISONERS playing their biggest show after 40-odd years of on-off-on musical shenanigans. The Roundhouse is the venue, the Chalk Farm surrounds splashed with smartly-dressed cats enjoying the greatest of modlife crises. Some of these people would’ve seen The Prisoners shaking up tiny pub venues in the mid-’80s with the likes of The Milkshakes, their Kentish garagepunk sound seemingly destined for enormously great things.
Fate, not to mention a rather prickly attitude towards playing the music industry game, intervened. Frequently. So small wonder there should be such enraptured incredulity that one of of the most credible bands of an uncertain generation should suddenly hit this bigtime. Never ones to rest on their Fred Perry laurels, their cheerleader is James Taylor, merrily winding up the crowd when he’s not wurlitzing away on a Hammond organ which precluded the late arrival of The Charlatans and tonight’s blushingly gracious support INSPIRAL CARPETS, now Tom Hingley-less but still stirring the loins with ‘This Is How It Feels’.
The Prisoners deliver proper widescreen entertainment as well – if old Chatham mucker Billy Childish relishes an antiquated live set-up, the re-released foursome show no fear of the modern PA system. They have a new album ‘Morning Star’ to promote and, in a many ways, many people to prove wrong. The crazy days of the Kennington Cricketers may be long gone for band and audience alike, but here there is a drive and dynamism which looks back at the lost years with a rueful energy. Still, the unbearably excellent ‘Whenever I’m Gone’ is slotted in midway through, while the mighty ‘Hush’ cranks up the finale. Some things never change…
THE PANDAMAN’S 2024 TOTAL: 238