The Great Escape: Day One
My flatmate Troy finally (finally) got the internet set up, so you can expect things to get back to normal around here in terms of more regular posting. So yeah, commence rejoicing and shit. Most importantly though, it allows me to at long last post my coverage of the incredible Great Escape festival last weekend, which was just… awesome in every sense of the word. So without further adieu, let’s do this.
The Ocean Rooms was where it was at on Thursday night, with early performances by Make Good Your Escape and The Moths that promised to get the weekend off to a brilliant start.
MAKE GOOD YOUR ESCAPE (Ocean Rooms, 7:30 PM) [MySpace]
The unfortunately long line at the wristband pick-up point meant we had to miss out on Fear of Flying’s 7:00 PM performance at Audio, so Nicky and I headed over to the Ocean Rooms to catch one of his clients, Make Good Your Escape, kick off the night there with their loud-ass brand of brooding, epic art-rock. First and foremost, Make Good Your Escape have a Phd in LOUD, and their thirty-minute performance alone likely ensured that I’ll be needing a hearing aid by my 30th birthday. That said, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, and I thoroughly enjoyed being rocked to my very core by the hometown favorites. Musically, they make their money on incredible percussion sections (they’ve been described as having a “lead drummer”), Mike Yates powerful, empassioned vocals and a unique guitar sound centered on diamond-cutter riffs that slice back and forth through the mix and set the band apart from their like-minded peers. They roared through their set, dedicating every single song to the Spinto Band along the way (don’t ask me) and making me less and less bummed about missing Fear of Flying with each passing song.
Make Good Your Escape proved to be the perfect start to a weekend of brilliant live music, and their live show had me extremely eager to check out their recorded material as soon as I got home. In a slightly unfortunate turn of events, I found that some songs strayed dangerously close to emo territory, something that I hadn’t picked up in their live show (my ears were probably just too busy bleeding to pick up on it, however). That said, last year’s Never Look Back Here Again mini-LP remains an extremely impressive debut, and I look forward to catching them at least one more time before I return to the US at the end of June. It’s not for everyone, but be sure to download their excellent upcoming single (I think) “The Return” if this sounds like your kind of thing.
MP3: “The Return” - Make Good Your Escape
LOOK-SEE PROOF (Ocean Rooms, 8:10 PM) [MySpace]
Next up were Look-See Proof, an energetic four piece from Hertfordshire who I stuck around for as there were no other intriguing shows at that time in the vicinity of the venue and I wasn’t about to miss a second of the Moths, the band I was most excited for at the festival. I wish I could say I was pleasantly surprised, but… I wasn’t. Despite searing guitar riffs and a nice double-pronged vocal attack, they were very same old, same old indie rock, nothing terribly special and definitely nothing to get excited about. Onto the Moths then…
THE MOTHS (Ocean Rooms, 9:00 PM) [MySpace]
It’s getting to be a bit ridiculous how much I love this band. Their debut 7″ is a record for the ages, an incredible triple A-side single, featuring three incredible tracks all worthy of the loftiest praise. Seriously, a lot of young bands would sell their collective souls for one single as good as any one of these, and the Moths went ahead and dropped three at once their first time out. I’d hoped this meant that they just had so many incredible tracks at their disposal that they could afford to waste (well not really “waste”, per se) three on their debut single, and so I was excited to hear how a complete set from them would hold up against those initial tracks.
They opened incredibly strong (maybe a bit too strong), blowing their load early dropping all three tracks off that immaculate debut - “Games”, “Wild Birds” and “Valentine” - in order right off the bat. That said, I’m very excited to report that there really wasn’t a terribly significant drop-off in the quality from the first three songs of the set. “Tell Me” and next single “Tumbling Down” sounded fantastic, but it was the closing track “Night Is On Fire”, with it’s self-referential “like moths to the light” lyric, that was the best yet-to-be-released song of the night. After the show, the band explained that it will likely be the B-side to the next single (though personally I think it should be the other way around), and I can’t fucking wait. Long live the Moths, who with the recent signing of The Wombats and Dead Disco to 14th Floor Recordings and 679 (respectively), can be touted as the best unsigned band in Britain.
I want so badly to make all three tracks from the single available for download, but that would be all kinds of unfair to the band, so download the brilliant “Valentine” below and the demo of upcoming single “Tumbling Down” below as well and then, y’know, actually buy the single.
MP3: “Valentine” - The Moths ((highly recommended))
MP3: “Tumbling Down” (Demo) - The Moths
After the Moths it was off to catch Ghosts at the Barfly. Unfortunately though, they were incredibly delayed, and as 10:15 turned into 11:00 and then 11:30, I bit the bullet and caught the last train back to London as I still hadn’t found a place to crash. Thus, I missed out on Ghosts (though I heard their set ended up being played by PA problems and devolved [in a good way, apparently] into them singing the theme songs from soaps with the audience) and Shameless, but all in all it was a good start to what would prove to be an unforgettable weekend. Check back for my coverage of day two and three tomorrow, when shit really got good.