MTV Liverpool Music Week: The Underground
Various Venues, Liverpool
30/10/08 - 02/11/08
With so much going on in LMW, it’s easy to miss the DIY events. The
These ears were put on this planet to hear many things, but the Puppini-styled harmonies of Barbieshop were not amongst them. Brushing them aside, and skipping merrily past the performance-school-garage of face-paint enthusiasts The Long Finger Bandits, our festival really gets underway with the Molotov cocktail of pop that is Town Bike. Technicolor punk anthems explode into Schlesinger-esque choruses, like The Archies scrapping over a copy of Too Tough To Die. Ace.
After agonising over their clash with the always-entertaining Pete Bentham & The Dinner Ladies, we leg it down the road to Korova to catch Barringtone, which turns out to be a good decision. Barry Dobbin’s searing fretwork, a la Stephen Malkmus peering over Frank Zappa’s shoulder, makes for an entertainingly baffling show. A darn good way to kick off the week.
Fast-forward to a night of ‘experimental’ (read: not pop) delights at Mello Mello: evident Sabbath fans Zangief play riffs so crushingly primitive, they may as well have just crawled out of the primordial soup. It’s exhilarating stuff. Musically-amorphous prog sextet The Laze step up next, and proceed to confuse and engage in equal measure.
Zukanican’s jazz-tinged bleepiness excites the head-nodding throng, but The Fly nips across the street to Tito’s for Noiseclub’s terrifying set of improv, er, noise, visually augmented by epilepsy-inducing lasers. Back in Mello Mello, space-rock heroes Mugstar melt the audience’s collective brain with an utterly captivating set of hugely powerful, psych-splattered drones. The bigger venues may be pulling in the crowds, but it’s lovingly-curated shows like these that really provide the goods.
Will Fitzpatrick
