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Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
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Y Niwl
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Dignan Porch
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On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

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Gig Review

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart / Shrag
Brighton, Concorde 2

Article written by Max K - Sep 2, 2010

Pains of Being Pure At Heart

Fresh from a triumphant Indietracks headlining slot Brooklyn’s The Pains of Being Pure At Heart hit the south coast in the company of fellow ‘trackers Shrag, who also happen to be local indiepop heroes in the ascendancy, so expectation ran pretty high among our little gang of hardened giggers.

This expectation was raised in part by one of our number who had returned from the midlands with tales of joyful musical abandon and nerve shredding vehicular derring-do, so it was a bit of a letdown to kick off the evening with forgotten tickets and missed drinking time in the pub…

Take two, and arrival at the C2 venue was met with what must have been test time for the new retina-melting strobe lights – presumably with the early crowd as guinea pigs; fewer than a dozen fits to be declared a success…?

Shrag

Shrag bounced through their set, evoking memories of ‘Riot Grrrrl’, the B-52’s and, dare I say it, Bow Wow Wow, their shouty-yelpy style initially quite endearing but ultimately, for these ears, a tad samey. Top marks for enthusiasm though, and nice that there appeared to be a well-informed local following in the house, rather than the usual soul-sapping twitter during the support set.

Soul sapping twitter was to be endured during the main set, however, as the irritating couple to my left never shut up, and came close to being slung into the newly installed bottle bins – this was all in my head, of course, in reality the worst they got was a ‘hard’ stare, which wouldn’t have been noticed in the dazzling light show anyway, they probably thought I was squinting…

This aside, the Pains served up a storming wall of sound set, kicking off with their ever-so-slightly dubious song about sisterly love, creating a melodically fuzzy maelstrom distinct from their recorded output – okay, the nuances of the boy/girl vocals might have been lost at times, but the general consensus was that this ensured clear blue water between the Pains and Magic Numbers-style sugariness, so we were happy enough for once to forgive the sonic mess that has long become a trademark of this particular venue.

We were treated to the inevitable ‘you’re awesome…’ comments – honestly, has any other piece of gig-speak achieved such toe-curling notoriety, totally failing in its attempt to create a band-meets-crowd utopia? There should be a law against such inanities, but perhaps I’m being churlish…?

With the confidence of a band knowing this was their time, we were blasted through a set lifted from their eponymous debut, a trio of guitars pointed out to sea, backing keyboards harmonising to create a wonderfully full sound (with muffled vocals thrown in as standard, of course) – this self-assured spell was only broken when the singer insisted on talking to us in his strangely squeaky, 33rpm-played-at-45rpm voice, but hey…

This was a performance by a band clearly within its capabilities, a league above the usual indie fare already and hopefully destined for greater things. The consensus was that they will have to be careful not to get stuck going down a ‘path of least resistance’ cul-de-sac, but for the moment they should live the dream, even if it does involve Shadows-esque choreography – however, that could have been down to the limited stage space, and it did add to the general fun of the evening to be fair. Even the minor horror of briefly confusing the intro to ‘A Teenager In Love’ with Phil Collins’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, an evil epiphany moment if ever there was one, failed to diminish the warm fuzziness of the occasion. Our beer-addled minds finally decided it was really more akin to ‘Sometimes’ by The Strokes, and left it at that. Crisis averted…

I think we turned up expecting to be treated to a display of lightweight and, perhaps, slightly mawkish shoegazing - not necessarily a disaster in itself, I’d hasten to add. Instead, we left admiring a young band willing and able to hit the overdrive pedal and rock out. Long may that continue.

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/thepainsofbeingpureatheart