reviews

The Active-M’s songs were dripping in sugar coating, and their singer and guitarist certainly knew how to strut his stuff. Their material was quirky - the opening song, a karate kicking guitar/twin vocal number, swiftly followed by a track with keyboards and trombones! The Active-M are not the sort of band who mess around. Their songs were all accessible in their own way, ranging from punk to pop-funk to indie-metal outings, their edgy tunes effortlessly snowballed into a deliciously tight package. Elements of dark 80’s pop sounds mixed with lashings of Franz Ferdinand and T-Rex. With a raven-haired girl bass player and a dreadlocked Rasta drummer to boot, The Active-M had the good looking sparkle of A-list. How long before they are snapped up? (My only criticism was that the girl bass player could have danced more!)

Next up, Famous Last Words came onstage to a roar of distortion before launching into their rock ’n roll fuelled set. This 3 piece had good energy and bounded about the stage for the whole set. Whereas The Active-M flirted and teased with the stage, the famous last words owned it. It’s rare to hear such a clear and tight LOUD band play so well, but they did. Their set reminded the reviewer of the Presidents of the U.S.A. and Terrorvision, which you can draw your own conclusions from. A real feature of the set was the amount of stop-start-stop elements all their songs seemed to have. This did grate after a while, but they were nothing short of fun and attitude. The only other criticism was that the songs all sounded too similar. Whether this was because they were less musically interesting and varied than The Active-M, I don’t know, but they should work on that.

The headliners, The Brakes, were, by comparison to what had gone before, a real disappointment. Lacking the suss and soul of The Active-M and the testosterone of Famous Last Words, they played their way through an otherwise stale set of blues by numbers. The singer had a harmonica, which seemed to blare its way through the P.A. all too often, creating your reviewer to grasp for his pint in pain. The music was dull and just devoid of ideas and inspiration. If you enjoy driving music, the sort that Virgin Radio pumps out, then The Brakes might be for you.

Otherwise, the brakes are in serious need of some brake fluid.

All in all, a great night, where the support showed the diversity and exciting sounds in London right now.

Benjamin Calder