Obits
The Lexington, London
10/05/11

The old ones are the best. Or are they? With twenty-something American punk/lo-fi/indie (delete as appropriate) bands emerging in sweaty basements and garages left right and centre, Obits arrive in London to answer one simple question. Can these relative old timers still cut it? They’re hardly wizened and grizzly, but compare them to Crocodiles, Wavves, Wild Nothing and the rest and we’re talking Topman vs Marks & Spencer’s Blue Harbour range.

Shuffling onstage in dark shirts and sensible shoes (probably) the New York band eschew fresh faces and bouncy fringes for furrowed brows and greying temples. Slinging guitars over their shoulders like they’ve done countless times before (these guys have played in bands including Hot Snakes, Edsel and Shortstack) they step straight into their well worn punk rock groove. A few songs in, ‘You Gotta Lose’, the opener from this year’s album ‘Moody, Standard And Poor’, begins to drive home a point. Watching Obits race through one confidently executed, unapologetic number after another is like finding the missing piece of a jigsaw. Obits go some way to bringing the enjoyably relentless resurgence of American indie music full circle tonight. They show us where the whippersnappers pick up some of the cornerstones of their music, before going back a generation further for the roots of Obits’ sound itself.

Like a rickety steam engine with a broken handbrake, the songs career powerfully forward, but the muttered thanks between them don’t detract from the barrage. Aggressive percussion and scratchy, irritating guitars and vocals recall a number of Obits’ esteemed forbearers (Henry Rollins, The Ramones) but their sound remains very much their own. After finishing with ‘I Want Results’, they don’t return for an encore. The boisterous shouts of encouragement from the crowd prove that these oldies are goodies indeed.

Ben Homewood