RUBICKS are already on stage when we arrive at the Barfly and they’re making one hell of a noise. Their sound is underpinned with huge techno backing tracks as they thrash guitars over the top. The singer looks like Debbie Harry and sounds like Hazel O’Connor. She’s joined at the front by a bloke playing keyboards / bass and a drummer at the back hammering the shit out of his kit.
They are loud enough to cause structural damage to the venue and a genuinely exciting proposition. Their full on approach to melding hard dance beats and rock guitar reaps big dividends and accordingly they draw the biggest crowd of the night. Information is skant on the net but I’m fairly sure they are a London-based band and you should certainly keep an eye out for them.
AUDIOPORN are plain weird. The lead singer, Adrien Munden, is dressed Clockwork Orange style in a dark suit and bowler hat. The bass player, Pete Coombs, seems to be, to the untrained eye, dressed in 1940’s air force uniform. Add to the brew a drummer, Che Albrighton and keyboard player (a name for whom I could only find Simon Abbot but unless my eyes are beginning to fail me was definitely a woman) and you have one of the most bizarre gigs I’ve ever seen.
All are highly accomplished musicians switching styles in the blink of an eye from guitar thrash outs to muzak to jazz funk (I don’t even like typing that phrase let alone listening to it). The whole set appeared to be one long song about ‘My Uncle's Tank’ that took in school boy French, shagging native girls around camp fires and many other quirky diversions. Although you have to respect any band that starts their set with a declaration that they are abut to commit commercial suicide and then go ahead and do exactly that, you can’t ignore the fact that if a bunch of drama students were to form a band then Audioporn would be the result. Highly stylised, utterly surreal, wonderful musicians they may be, but I have no desire to see them ever again.
After that anything is going to seem conventional and sure enough FRENCH KICKS are a five piece rock band from New York. Whilst they may appear to be conventional after Audioporn they are far from predictable.
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They consist of Nick Stumpf on keyboards and lead vocals, Josh Wise on keyboards, guitar and occasional lead vocals, Matt Stinchcomb on keyboards and guitar and Lawrence Stumpf on bass (and yet again unless my eyes have packed in there was definitely five of them even if there website only has four members listed and photographed, shit I wasn’t even drinking!)
Lead singer Nick Stumpf is an incredibly tall man wearing a moth eaten suit with converse all stars and possesses a voice that brings to mind Hamilton Leithauser of the Walkmen. The band deal in classy garage rock with sublime pop hooks thrown in. At times they are reminiscent of The Strokes especially if you swap some of the guitar lines with keyboard flourishes. At other times they are closer to the aforementioned Walkmen dishing out a denser, less immediate sound.
Most of the material played tonight comes from their recently released ‘The Trial of the Century’ although they do play some older songs too including set closer ‘Piano’. It’s excellent stuff too, keeping the songs generally under four minutes each, they refuse to stick to any acknowledged blueprint but constantly bring new ideas to their songs. They have that wonderful combination where their music is easily accessible upon first listen but rewards the listener who comes back for repeat listening with new revelations each time. Certainly they were excellent live and they should have a bright future ahead of them. Don’t just take my word for it, check out their website and download three of their songs for free (http://www.frenchkicks.com/index.html).
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