We made our way down to The Late Room last Friday night to catch Nephew, who were playing in support of Ezra Reich (me neither), and who we’d last seen at the Drowned In Sound 5th birthday bash at the Night & Day in October where they played a damned fine set, possibly the best of the day. They were bottom of the bill on Friday night but played a blinder in front of, oh, about 20 fortunate punters. Nephew are a five piece based in Salford who play lush, introspective pop songs which have a habit of bursting into flames at regular intervals. They remind me a lot of Elbow but with a rather effective quiet/loud dynamic going on. Their opener had definite post-rock leanings with a brooding Godspeed You! Black Emperor style guitar motif and delicate violin suddenly crashing into an all-out sonic onslaught that Mogwai might be proud of. The violin is an integral part of the Nephew sound, lending subtlety to the quiet parts, being sampled and looped à la Final Fantasy to create the effect of a larger string section, and soaring above a thundering rhythm section when things get louder. Aside from their very fine sound and excellent band dynamic, Nephew have some marvellous songs only one of which I know the name of, that being “High Rise Buildings”, I think, which as I recall had a suitably skyscraping chorus. An EP is due out sometime in the new year and they will hopefully be out on the road to promote it. Go and see them, give them an audience they deserve.
The crowd swelled to upwards of 30 people for The Motorettes, a no-nonsense three piece from the North East, who are signed to Kitchenware. Initial impressions were that they were a Futureheads tribute act such was the similarity of the tight vocal harmonies, Geordie accents and edgy guitar work but a couple of songs in those thoughts subsided and I began to quite enjoy their rather catchy throwaway power pop. “Death On The Radio” was particularly excellent and and showed that they have a way with the three-minute pop song that should see them reaching a wider audience in 2006.
Wearing a blue boiler suit and a huge orange cravat, Ezra Reich cut a rather odd figure behind his keyboard, flanked by two guitarists and obscuring our view of the drummer. Ezra is the son of minimalist composer Steve Reich but plays a familiar style of 80s synth pop favoured by the likes of The Killers and The Bravery. It was all very ho hum. The songs just didn’t grab the attention and were little more interesting than the average Bravery fare. Ezra, however, played it like he was playing in front of thousands, rather than the 20-odd people who were still there. He threw rock star shapes, gurned through guitar solos and occasionally ventured off-stage onto the empty dancefloor before him, presumably searching for his fans. It was an admirable performance by the frontman but could not disguise the fact that the evening’s bill should have been in the reverse order.
Posted by
The Ledge on 13th December 2005 at 9:44 pm |
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