The Great Escape - Day Two

Multiple venues, Brighton - 18 May 2007

by Jon Fletcher

All about Gallows

"He may not be for the family market – he peddles his trade through screamed invective and phlegm - but make no mistake, this man is a true entertainer"

We start the evening upstairs at Audio, where Undercut play to a reasonably full room by virtue of the fact they’re one of the only bands on this early. It’s an opportunity wasted for the Bristol quintet and frustratingly, that’s through no fault of their own. The tiny sound desk seems to be unmanned for half the set and when someone does eventually plonk themselves infront of it, they leave the knobs and dials almost untouched. This leaves singer Johnny Benn visibly struggling to rise above his own band, while the whole thing is continually at risk of being swallowed by the chatter of those watching. There are hints of a solid, melodic rock band, but the sound is so bungled it’s difficult to tell.

The undercut theme is continued downstairs, where Pistolas’ effervescent front man Simon Buller admits to modelling himself on those pillars of early 90s boy band hysteria, New Kids On The Block. Buller pours a bucket load of camp over a vocal delivery that is breathlessly energetic, chock full of squeals and half-sung, half-shouted slogans. There’s a strong suspicion this is a man who spent his youth replicating boy band moves in front of the mirror, possibly in his mother’s high heels. If this is what a childhood NKOTB obsession looks like when it’s filtered through the current wave of Just Add Synths™ indie rock, then hell - it’s unexpectedly good.

From Audio we stomp up to the King & Queen, a cavernous pub with a medieval theme, Wetherspoon prices and by the looks of things, clientele to match. Into this bizarre setting are injected Australian female foursome Sex Panther. They are uninspiring to start with and there is a suspicion that this may just be a bog standard chunky guitar band riding the all-girl novelty bus to stardom. That’s not helped by the band members' ill-advised pseudonyms – the singer is called Storm ‘Wino’ Panther; the drummer goes by the name of Jess Row Skull. As things progress though, it becomes clear that Miss Panther – who’s bottom jaw sometimes trembles X Factor style as she holds a note – has a resonant depth to her voice that was not immediately apparent. The songs themselves seem to acquire both tunefulness and clarity and the band’s absolution is completed when we’re told they spent the previous night sleeping in a children’s playground.

A short hop up the road is the Gloucester, recently acquired by the Fly group as the latest extension to the Barfly brand. Inside, The Whip are once again proving themselves to be at least ten times as good as they’re given credit for, putting together a set that would, were the band on at a more sensible time (i.e. one in the morning), turn the entire dance floor into a seething pit. You know that old BBC promo sequence with the bland dance-to-trance music but the insanely euphoric crowd leaping up and down with their arms aloft in a slow-mo wave? You know how that never actually happens at dance gigs? It does with The Whip. At this time of night though, we're not quite 'loose' enough and it’s left to one giant gay guy to charge down to the front, tear off his top and pogo frantically while the band members try to avoid making eye contact. Predictably, ‘Trash’ is played last – and rightly so. The breakneck riff carries the song like flotsam in a flood; the drop into the two-tier chorus is immense. This is a track – and a band – who are made for a live setting.

Amplify this statement tenfold and you have Gallows. In fact, amplify everything tenfold. The Zap is a blackened hole hollowed out beneath the upper tier of Brighton’s seafront promenade. With a bar running down the left side and raised balconies down the right, the whole venue seems to be channelled towards the mosh pit and stage, cocooned in an arch beyond. It served a relatively static Kubichek! more than adequately yesterday but today, you couldn’t have asked for a better venue for Gallows.

“I bought this mike stand off some bloke earlier today for £20,” says red-topped front man Frank Carter, “And now I’m going to smash it up.” It’s the sort of wanton destruction that in most bands would stink of rock n roll cliché, but this is not most bands. Responding to a well-mannered enquiry from the audience as to the fate of the stand a little later on, Carter points out that his scrawny frame and puny arms aren’t really cut out for stand smashing (though he does eventually hold a section of the ill-fated item triumphantly aloft). This strange combination of self-deprecating confidence and lightning fast responses put Turner in that select group of front men you’d go to watch even if the band didn’t play a note. He may not be for the family market – he peddles his trade through screamed invective and phlegm - but make no mistake, this man is a true entertainer.

Early on in the show he leaves the stage, through the crush and reappears on top of the bar from which he directs proceedings like a demented circus master. The rest of the band is equally mobile, forming rock god, guitar thrashing poses atop speaker stacks and charging around the small stage in perpetual fury. But it’s the lack of fury in Turner that makes Gallows so enticing a live proposition. When he’s in action, leaning forward, mouth open and screaming into the mircrophone like his life depends on it, you’d think he’d like nothing better than to have us all nuked. Between songs though, he’s almost affable – at one point demanding that the girls and boys put their arms around each other. “Just imagine,” he says, “in years to come, you’ll be able to tell your kids you got together at a Gallows gig.” Imagine.

In the vain hope that someone might be able to top that performance, we make our way down a windy seafront to Concorde 2, a venue that seems to have been fashioned out of an-out-of-town Victorian railway station, should such a thing have ever existed. There the Rakes are doing what they do best, which is to sing ‘Strasbourg’ and ’22 Grand Job’ - songs everyone knows – with a fervour that suggests they too have had just about enough of them. It’s a solid but unexceptional performance, with even singer Alan Donohoe’s angular dance routines seeming understated.

At this point, Condorde 2 is supposed to be handed over to a Transgressive Records showcase. With the likes of Battle (note, there’s no ‘s’ on this lot and they were here first), Foals and The Holloways on the bill, we expect great things, but what we get is an hour’s wait before the first act – Brighton’s Mechanical Bride. Now, whoever it was that decided this lot would be suitable to follow on the heels of the Rakes – at a time of night when alcohol levels are high and attention levels are low – needs to be taken outside and shot. Even without sound problems that see the band standing awkwardly on stage for a good twenty minutes before commencing a set drenched in crackles and feedback, they were never likely to leave unscathed.

Mechanical Bride have no percussion and play thoughtful, whispy folk, full of dreamy, gentle harmonies. They might be wonderful, but are soon drowned out by the chatter, with each song concluded to a chorus of booing. Since the sound problems and unsympathetic billing have both been out of their hands, you can only feel for them as they cut their losses and leave the baying crowd behind them. Thoroughly disenchanted after what has up to now been a superb day, we do the same.
Lovesoxxx said on May 21st 2007 [report abuse]

It's almost like I was there. Oh, hang on... I felt so sorry for Mechanical Bride.

dannielle said on February 22nd 2008 [report abuse]

his name is fucking frank carter NOT turner you stupid shit

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