As with those weird conical bras that made women's breasts look like sandcastles in the '50s, some fashions have to be looked back on accompanied by a resigned sigh. Annoyingly, like Elma Fudd looking down the barrel of his shotgun to detect a blockage, these same things seem like such a good idea at the time. Who knows how the future will judge the current flavour of the month - angular men playing angular guitar music - and, indeed, who really cares? At the moment it's where a lot of the groundbreaking music is breeding, and that can only be a good thing.
The Drowned In Sound dates seem hell-bent on milking this genre of music for every drop of inspiration, and then more besides. Packing what must have been 'a lot' of punters into a venue so small you couldn't swing a hippie without getting their rank dreadlocks in the bar snacks, the organisers had obviously gone down the route of signing up anyone with a haircut and a Fender to appear in today's lineup. As is so often the case with this kind of event, the music was hit and miss - often with the same band hitting and missing in the space of five minutes - but then, you don't come to an area that rubs drainpipe jeans with Shoreditch to admire the musical subtleties. Shouting, gurning and desperation to shock all hang heavily in the air; the Pleasure Unit’s atmosphere is reminiscent of a foetal Selfish Cunt concert.
But as risible as this philosophy is - and the general state of the Nathan Barley-a-like audience strengthens my conviction on this matter - it is essentially unimportant. It's the music that I've come to review, not the dress-sense of the participants. With that in mind, then, a quick word about iLiKETRAiNS' attire will suffice before I move on to the important stuff. And the quick word is that military jackets aren't as good a look as people seem to think. What with sneering insouciance being the order of the day, costumed musicians just seem at odds with the general ambience. It's a little bit twee. But anyway, that's all water under the sartorial bridge.
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The music itself is standard enough fare – art college boys after being exposed to one too many issues of i-D magazine – but displays a healthy respect for the off-kilter and a worship of British Sea Power and Jesus And Mary Chain that just skirts around copyright infringement. A projectionist is on site to show, through the medium of motion celluloid, that iLiKETRAiNS really do like trains. So far, so uninspiring.
And yet, there is something about these boys that captivates. Maybe it’s the chill Northern blood oozing through their veins, or maybe it’s something less ridiculously pretentious, but, somehow or other, attention gravitates towards their stage. Not in a jerky wannabe Johnny-Rotten-with-learning-disabilities way (as demonstrated ably by the lead singer of iForward, Russia! earlier in the day), but more through the eerily melodramatic sound they conjure. In a lot of ways, it’s like being slowly submerged up to your eyeballs in black treacle; but then again, I have an unexplained fondness for black treacle. So make of that what you will.
For the less adventurous amongst you (or for those refuse to read reviews unless they do the journalistic equivalent of wiping your arse for you), though, there has to be a mark out of ten. So here goes.
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