The Underground Stage
“Grids & Dots have a tensile strength in their songs, like spider silk. You barely know it’s even there until you’re all tied up in it and the fangs are bearing down on you. The temptation for many artists is to just turn it up to eleven, but there’s real skill in being able to […]
“Vetty Vials’ superpower is making hard stuff look easy – this set is as hard as barbed wire, but it slips down like sugar off a spoon. It’s rare to watch a band that have everything just *down*, but by God it’s a pleasure to see.” Facebook | Instagram | Twitter Subscribe to The Underground […]
“I’m trying really hard to avoid connecting Clay J Gladstone’s onstage stab vests to their sharp, finely honed sound, but it’s impossible. Sorry. Anyway, look – Clay J Gladstone are a Labrador-Doberman cross of a band, delighted with everything but poised to rip your neck open. If you’re built for it, this lot are near […]
“OK Hotel drop into the early set like it’s the early hours, a set dressed up to the nines with bangers. ‘Swim’ and ‘Life Is Crazy (Like That)’ jump off the page but there’s little to fault here across the board. Full-cream, muscular, perfectly cooked – pick your metaphor, it’s all alright round here right […]
“Seathru play a short but well-spiked set tonight and deliver in bloody spades on the promise of their singles to date. They might be brand new but there’s so much talent here, songs bursting out of the edges of the picture, a colossal and ramshackle collision of electricity and joy. Chock full of minerals and […]
After a quick outfit change, Second Idol’s debut arrives with a barrage of guitars, coming as no surprise to those familiar with the band’s previous form as Bruise Pristine. Opening with a ringing wall of sound, it pounds and strides and generally gives you the death stares, right up in your face and absolutely unfliching. […]
Throbbing with menace in the verse, but exploding into ramshackle joy in the chorus, Human Noise’s latest chugs and thrums like an engine. Bookended by a no-nonsense start and a whiplash ending this is smart songwriting, chock full of musical flourishes and sharply observed scenes. Great stuff.
The outstanding Hope D returns with her Cash Only EP and among this excellent set of songs sits this, another sharp set of observational everyday notes elevated into a swaggering digitised stomp of a song. While stylistically this is showing *another* side to her polygonal talent, at the heart of it all lies a questioning […]
Wow – when Carla Geneve lets it all go, you’re going to want to duck. Following on from a series of (musically, not lyrically) more gentle songs, this one is let off its leash and is commanded to go for the throat. “I’ve been listening to screamo / I’ve been feeling real emo… again” goes […]