The Underground Stage
New outfit Chimers crash, bang, and wallop their way into existence with this raucous debut, a heady mix of Royal Headache rawness and QOTSA intensity. Each of its parts have been stripped of their paint and pushed to their limits, leaving a concentrated blast of really bloody meaning it. An emphatic entrance.
Skyway may have only just returned from a multi-year hibernation but they’ve roared back into life with this high-velocity blast of sharply-edged punk. It’s fast and it’s loud but this is no wild haymaker, this is a series of well-aimed blows intended to inflict maximum damage. There’s just enough scream in the vocal, harmonies to […]
Scabz’ ability to chuck a sharpened penny at over-inflated egos is hurled here at the police, in a bare minute-and-a-half of contempt and pity. Frenetic, acid-tongued, and furiously mad, you’ll show up for the trademark two-liners (“I get free punching bags / activists, black kids, and fags”), but it’s also well worth hanging around for […]
More Colour’s debut record has got a scruffbag swagger that’s hard to resist, a rolling lope that’s guaranteeed to please. With a vocal that’s halfway between an operatic wail and an exhausted croak, and its spindly, spidery guitar & rhythm lines, this debut is short, sharp, and sweet all at once.
Swapping their hi-energy antics for a total change of pace, this is Cry Club doing nothing but showing off their songwriting and vocal chops. Masterfully restrained, that voice creaks at the edges with expression and range and coupled with some judicious autotune it comes off like the Disney song that Cher wishes she’d written. A […]
This ridiculously good debut channels the very best bits of Montaigne and Regina Spektor – as well as both Kates Bush and Miller Heidke – to create a shimmering wonder, a towering wall of pyrotechnic whimsy carrying enough power with it to wipe whole civilisations clean off the map. The musicality here is weapons-grade, swooshing […]
“Ed Barnes closes out tonight’s episode with a rambunctious set of faux-fighty acoustic numbers that are both spikily aggressive but wildly self-deprecating all at the same time. It takes spine and intestines to pull that off, but Ed Barnes has the tunes and the chutzpah to make it seem like the easiest thing in the […]
“Billy Puntton is filling in for the sadly-absent Amends tonight, but there’s no room where he doesn’t fill it right the hell up to the brim. Every atom of energy in the building is, as is his wont, hoovered up and turned into a series of wry and tragi-comic tales set to high-velocity acoustic punk. […]
“This is almost, but not quite, Bruise Pristine acoustic and unplugged. The lack of full-bore fury reveals whole new sides to the songs, but without diminishing their strength or the passion in the delivery. Strange times call for strange tactics, and while this is literally the last thing you’d expect from this lot, it is […]