Well this reviewer showed up fashionably late to the third Shake The Shacklewell all dayer and a good 2 or 3 hours after one of the bands I was on the guest list to review had played! I had however apologized to the bands PR in advance and will apologize to Eureka California again here in this review that I didn't make it in time to see you play again, especially as this was the last night of the bands UK tour with Bunnygrunt. Eureka California are however staying in the UK for another week as they are about to record their latest album in Leeds epicentre of the thriving Yorkshire music scene.
Well once I'd apologized in person to Marie from Eureka California and to Mike the PR man come record label boss for my tardiness it was time to go into the gig room to start seeing the bands that were still left to see. The first I caught was Colleen Green a young American woman who was playing solo with a tablet providing all the backing tracks she was playing her guitar and singing along with.
She was reasonably engaging but needed a real band to flesh out her often still quite teen angst lyrics about how she Wants To Grow Up or how She Will Follow Him, musically she was in similar territory to Angel Corpus Christi but without the accordion or the Heroin habit. Also the solo with backing tracks approach made a song about how she Can't Hold a Conversation sound like something Peaches might do but without the naked ambition that Peaches tends to show.
I Got Some was almost like a shopping list not bad but she really shouldn't have performed I Wanna Be Sedated like this it didn't work it was never meant to be a dream pop statement and I was also losing a bit of interest as most of the backing tracks sounded too similar like they had been picked straight off the pre-programmed menu of her machine the only song in the latter half of her set to stand out was the one about how she Can Do What Ever She Wants. I'd like to see her again with a band but not solo.
Next on where Fortuna Pop!s Irish girl group September Girls who I had imagined as a female Big Star and on seeing them setting up with Vox guitars and Amps and the look of a Young Bangles as well as requests to the sound man for more reverb and echo I thought that was what we would be getting until the 5 of them cranked it up and opened with the first song that could have been called All I Wanna Do Is Scream and the girl on the Vox Bass started singing like Siouxie Soux and they actually sounded like Siouxie and the Banshees if they were a girl group but with 4 of the 5 September Girls switching vocals and harmonies throughout.
The next song about how they were Falling split the dark noir vocals between two of the vox wielding girls as this dark brooding sound enveloped the room in a cauldron of reverb and echo it was great. I think the Keyboard player introduced the next song as Bonfires and no matter how much the Bass player tried her hair kept falling over her face throughout it as this dark tale unfolded and drew us in to an almost Arson Garden type song.
Not sure what the song I put down as Oh God Save Him is really called but I wasn't sure if they wanted to save him or whether the siren call in the multi part vocals actually wanted to damn him for all eternity for what he had done. Either way they were whipping up a storm of Gothish noir almost 45 Grave style rock. Cursing The Sea which is the title track of the band's debut album was brilliant as the vocals built from a single voice to 4 voices and the swelling music gave it almost a gospel feel to it only the music was not in any way gospel and had great washes of sound as the Vox Bass and guitar battled with each other.
When they started to tell us to Stay Away from them it seemed unlikely as I know I had been drawn into the bands world quite quickly but the ex they were dissing had been flung into the darkness the band's music evoked and the feeling continued as in the next song we heard them telling him that He Loved No One and when he could have been loving one of the September Girls that seemed like a mistake but then they also made clear they were Not Your Baby no I think they are deserving of far better treatment than that.
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They finished with a song that had the brilliant chorus of If I Could Swim I'd Be Dead By Now over the swirling reverb drenched Vox's and keyboards it was a great closing number to a great set and I Had to go and buy the bands album straight afterwards. I want to see September Girls live again real soon.
Next on were headliners Bunnygrunt, who were playing the last show of the bands current UK tour and with the bands UK Touring line-up that features Ashley Hohman on the Bass and vocals rather than Karen Reid. They were promoting the band's latest album Vol 4 and opened the set by playing a Train song they learnt to play for the bands appearance at the Indie tracks festival last week it appeared to be called Last Train and had some fizzing guitar on it to get the place going.
They then got the bands Boogie on for Led It Out whose repeating riff worked really well although I was trying to work out how the bands singer Matt Harnish looked as straight as he did as the album I reviewed made them sound like champions league screw up stoners and well that's not how they look and they are tighter than that description might suggest.
I'm sure I'm guessing at most of the song titles and well why bother as the indie stoner dream noise continued to grab at us as the lyrics went on about how they gave up loving you well yeah ok. It's Alright was pretty urgent and full on in our faces. Frankie Is a killer was a real stand out and Ashley's backing vocals really helped to make it a good grandson to Frankie Teardrop it blistered as the sweat ran down the walls of the Shacklewell.
Young Abe Lincoln might be historically accurate but I doubt it but the drums pummelled into us and help bring a fraught tension to the room before they started to crash and Burn on what I believe was I Quit, Mr. W Hite the bands slightly frenetic and insane come down song.
A couple of times Matt had to let Ashley know the chords of the songs and one was the song where he kept telling us to Do It but not in a Pink Fairies style and then Ashley stepped up to the front to sing what I have down as Back In Your arms her vocals worked as a good counterpoint to what Matt was delivering.
They then played there perfect set closer as the penultimate song of the set it didn't matter as Don't Forget Who Your Friends Are worked brilliantly well and went down a storm before they closed the night with what I have down as Gemma Got Drunk but I guess might have been Gimme Five Bucks either way it was a good set closer and it was well worth getting to see Bunnygrunt Live.
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