Givers
Shacklewell Arms, London
08/07/2011

It is a balmy summer evening at Dalston’s Shacklewell Arms. The room is sweaty, humid and heaving, and The Fly can barely breathe, let alone contemplate picking up an instrument or singing. Louisiana fivepiece Givers do both, and to great effect.

Tiffany Lamson and Taylor Guarisco provide the perfectly harmonious vocal talent, but the whole group are gifted multi-instrumentalists, and the fact that they are essentially performing in a mid-sized sauna makes the show all the more impressive. Givers come from music backgrounds ranging from Cajun to Zydeco and folk and this is all reflected in their rhythmic, rootsy indie-pop. Lamson smashes the shit out of a glockenspiel – at one point you can even hear the glock above the guitars – and the band play with song structure in a manner not unlike prog-influenced UK contemporaries Dutch Uncles.

Of course, comparisons to Paul Simon and (consequently) Vampire Weekend are inevitable whenever an indie band goes a bit Afrobeat, but Givers certainly have a clear charm of their own, with a truly innovative approach to rhythm and melody and the sparkling boy/girl vocal partnership between Lamson and Guarisco.

The band stomp through tracks from recent album ‘In Light’ with wit, energy and verve, even throwing in a super funky Talking Heads medley which gets everyone dancing and yelling out things like “We love you!” Guarisco responds in kind, with comments on how much the band love London and how they would love to stay.

Laura Vevers