Male Bonding

The Garage,

London

17/10/2011

Dalston’s Male Bonding have in the past expressed disdain at the thought of being regarded as just another nineties throwback buzz band, but their consistently impressive musical output and live shows indicate that they don’t need to worry. Doing away with much of the heavy reverb and endless tempo changes that made up their excellent debut ‘Nothing Hurts’, they managed to produce something equally fun and exciting with second offering ‘Endless Now’. Whilst sounding a bit less fuzzy (and dare we say it a tad more commercial?) than its predecessor, maintained the band’s basic recipe for success: incurably infectious hooks, expert musicianship and charmingly angst-ridden lyrics – this is grunge-influenced power pop at its most winsome.

Despite their departure from lo-fi on record , their performance tonight is dreamy, reverb-heavy and thick with nineties nostalgia, even though they are playing at a resolutely noughties-themed  mid-sized corporate venue:  Islington’s Relentless Garage. The boys are clearly used to gigs in the more intimate and crowded pubs of their native postcode and its surrounding areas, but it is testament to their onstage confidence and superb technical abilities that tonight’s show feels warm, cosy and special. The majority-male crowd are initially stoic, with the occasional head-nod and foot twitch the biggest concession to dancing. However, as the show goes on and the hooks become more and more recognisable to ‘Nothing Hurts’ devotees, the foot-twitching escalates into a large cluster of excited young men jumping all over each other at the front, as the band look down in detached amusement. Male Bonding indeed.

Laura Vevers