SHOW NOTES
“Moreton are on their first headline tour tonight, after causing a rideable swell of excitement with their entrance into the world earlier in the year. The tracks that are out in the wild – including “The Water”, “Johana”, and “Specimen” – all get shaken out tonight, and the reception here feels (presumably) as impressed as the one they got from label Create/Control, who signed them up earlier in the year on the strength of just their very first recorded output. Don’t get me wrong, no-one’s jumping up and down or hurling themselves off the rafters – this is by some distance the slowest band I’ve seen in years – but it’s impressive, that’s the only word I can think of. The technical skill is out of this world and the songwriting is so out of kilter with everything else going on it lights up the room like a flamethrower going off. Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack, the whole of Bristol, England circa 1993 is the reference on record, but it’s got a way more buzzsaw edge live – new one “Ink Blot” is described as being “for all the nihilists in the room”, and is slow but scuzzy, soaring but rough-edged. It’s early doors for them, but there’s precious little other artists there right now that are brave enough to buck the trend in this sort of direction. More power to them.”