¡Forward, Russia! played so many gigs last year that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see signs that they had burned themselves out at their not-quite-sold-out Academy 2 gig last Friday night. However, it seems that a short break over Christmas, during which they recorded the new “Don’t Be A Doctor” single, has re-energised them, assuming they were worn out in the first place. On taking the stage they hurtled headlong into “Fifteen Part 1″ and it was obvious that Tom Woodhead was as hyper as he’s ever been, his hair lank with sweat within minutes as he wheeled across the stage, chopping imaginary logs with an imaginary axe. One day that lad will do himself a bad injury.

The band set off at such a pace for “Twelve” that poor Tom was having trouble keeping up with them, gulping down air at every tiny opportunity, which, I imagine, was quite a difficult feat to perform whilst strangling yourself with a microphone lead. It was compelling stuff, however, and the energy never waned, not even during the three new songs they played. The new songs have proper titles now instead of numbers, something which disappoints me a little but which I’d suspected would happen one day, but not quite so soon. “We Are Grey Matter” stuck to the ¡F,R! formula and passed without incident but “Don’t Be A Doctor” was quite brilliant, a sprawling mess of a song that some idiot somewhere will call their “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Not me, though. Another newie, I didn’t catch the name, was equally impressive, its insidious hook peeping out from beneath the band’s sonic maelstrom.

They ended the set with a rare and magnificant “Nineteen” (only the second time they’d played it, Whiskas claimed) and returned for “Thirteen” and drummer Katie’s star turn, “Sixteen”, during which she thrashed the living daylights out of her drums while yelping out the numbers one to ten. It was thrilling stuff all round and hopefully the band will get some more time off soon to get down to recording the follow up to Give Me A Wall.

¡Forward, Russia! – Thirteen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 1:12 pm by The Ledge and is filed under Gig Reviews, Reviews, mp3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.