Theme Park
Green Door Store,
Brighton
28/10/2011

On this cold, dark night Theme Park play in Brighton whilst back indoors, a documentary begins on BBC 4 charting the rise and fall of Creation Records, the fecund womb that sprogged the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Oasis. Accordingly, the members of the indie old guard who have Twitter accounts respond by tweeting thick and fast about the halcyon days of The House of Love and the Hacienda, when everybody was blitzed on E and staring at their shoes but having a fantastic time.

This reviewer had the misfortune of growing up in the landfill-band austerity years of Snow Patrol and Pigeon Detectives, so naturally the whole Creation period seems a tantalising distant idyll, holding the same summery lure as Downton Abbey before the First World War.  And, unfortunately, when Theme Park start playing, the hazier and more distant said idyll becomes.

Not that there is anything wrong with the London quintet – their coltish guitar pop is full of shuffling Bombay Bicycle Club drums and hooks that trill merrily above breezy basslines. It’s just that, watching them, it becomes difficult to imagine that there was once a time when guitar-based popular music actually had proper grit and feeling.  Theme Park take you on an insidious ride into mediocrity that couldn’t be further from Ride.

No doubt post-A Level students at 2013’s Reading Festival will relish Theme Park. In fact, the warm, moist tone that characterises ‘Wax’ and ‘Milk’ does a good job of the evoking the clammy cider-and-armpit fug of the new bands tent when it’s packed with teenagers on the Saturday afternoon. You can also imagine the band treating red-button viewers to an exclusive acoustic performance from Fearne & Reggie’s onsite tower. Herein lies the problem.

Matt Wright