My first trip to Leeds’ newest and seemingly hottest venue,the Belgrave Music Hall, and everything I’d read about it was true: its facilities make it the perfect hipster hangout and I entered to find myself swimming against a tide of beards and moustaches. Still, for the beer selection alone it was worth it, and the 200-capacity auditorium isn’t only well-proportioned but the sound is first-rate. So as I supped my pint of mega-hoppy High Wire (fans of hoppy beers like me are very well catered for here... maybe I’m a closet hipster), Mojo Fury warmed up the rapidly swelling audience for what was a sell-out show. It’s easy to see the appeal of their poppy alt-rock, even if the bassist, who throws shapes centre stage does look like he’s in the wrong band.
No such issues of identity for power trip The Wyches, who serve up a loose yet entertaining set of goth-grunge. It’s one hybrid I can’t recall havng encountered before, but it works well, with some chunky basslines and awkward, angsty lyrics delivered in a Kurt Cobain howl, and all the while they look like Cure fans did back in the 90s.
Future of the Left are one of those bands who, like Andrew Falkous and Jack Egglestone’s previous band mclusky, have build an extremely devoted – by which I mean rabid – fanbase. Quirky, offbeat and bloody noisy, they’ll never trouble the mainstream, and with songs swiping at the music industry the chances are they’re not going to get signed to a major label any time soon. These are precisely reasons that they’re a band that are the very epitome of ‘cult’. Touring their recently released pledge-funded fourth album, it’s no surprise that tracks from ‘How To Stop Your Brain in an Accident’ feature prominently. The album’s been well-received, and they certainly don’t sound like they’re only just bedding them in live in a set that’s tightly packed and tightly played. It’s not just about the energy or the quality of the performance, but the sense of FOTL being special that raised the atmosphere to an electric level, and the crowd went crackers from the get-go. Thankfully, these hipsters aren’t to cool to let to and flail around like maniacs when given the right soundtrack.
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The twin bass battery that characterises the sound of the first few numbers is killer, although much instrument-swapping means the sound is suitably varied – but they’re never less than ferocious as they power through ‘Bread, Cheese, Bow and Arrow’, ‘How to Spot a Record Company’, ‘Robocop 4 – Fuck Of Robocop’ and even manage to shoehorn in the mclusky track ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’. The set ends with drums and cymbals everywhere as they gleefully dismantle their gear all over the stage in a squall of feedback as the moshpit goes absolutely bloody ballistic. And who could blame them? Brilliant.
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