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Story One / My First Tooth / Eddie Halliday
The Old Queen's Head, Islington
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Article
written by Adam W
Feb 21, 2008.
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Delving into the London acoustic scene on the off chance you might see someone special could always go either way. On the one hand you could, indeed, discover someone special or find yourself in the all too familiar position of nodding off in front of bland singer-songwriter nonsense. Eddie Halliday is sadly of the latter persuasion, spinning his poorly written clichés of woe to an apathetic crowd. He is also notable for using the increasingly popular looping pedal, which he also utilises to crushingly dull effect. After all, having some fancy bit of kit is rather useless if you haven’t got interesting guitar parts or vocal harmonies to loop and play over… and he hasn’t. With no tunes, a strained voice, predictable lyrics and an inability to even keep time with his own looping gear, this chap is an exercise in how not to do it…
It’s a shame that the likes of our first act are so abundant on the scene because they steal valuable gig space away from genuinely promising acts, such as My First Tooth who follow. A boy plays guitar and sings, a girl plays violin/melodica/bouzouki and sings and the whole thing is very, very lovely. With melodies learned from the likes of Beirut, lyrical imagery inspired by Okkervil River and their literate ilk and vocals in debt to sweet Americana, this duo wear their influences strongly but have enough talent to blend them into something free of tired mimicry. Whilst the songwriting itself could benefit from an extra dimension, the musical interplay (particularly the beautiful violin playing) between the two creates an endearing fusion and shows that My First Tooth are well worth checking out as they push ever-so-sweetly in the right, if not entirely unique, direction.
Now it is not in the SoundsXP ethos to waste time criticising bands when we could be spending that time championing others, but every so often a band come along that are so unremittingly awful that public service remits dictate our people must be warned. Story One are that band. It is bad enough that they think the way to musical greatness is to churn out dreadful stage-school Aqualung meets Maroon 5 keyboard led pap, but the sheer smugness and posturing on show beggars belief. Their execrable Topman frontman struts around the venue, in and out of the crowd and flailing the micstand in a way that he seems convinced he is Freddie Mercury and this IS Wembley Stadium 1985. So carried away he is in his own dizzying world of rock greatness he almost decapitates half of My First Tooth with his micstand antics before plonking around the joint with a violin and some kind of deranged Pied Piper complex. More musical mess and a torrid cover of Grandaddy’s AM180 later, we leave mortified at the mere sight of something so inexplicably ghastly. London – you have your new worst band, for the love of God be careful…
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