Cache On Demand

Another godawful review from the BBC days. Rubbishness all my own work, incidentally, I'm not trying to blame the editor. I can't remember this band at all, bar the name. Luckily I wrote a vague and unmemorable review to match.

CACHE - The Wheatsheaf, 4/03

There's a sizable knot of people snugly standing in The Wheatsheaf waiting for the arrival of Cache. Support act Oakland Majesty Revival has warmed everyone up nicely with their bluesy 70s style pop show, and a selection of tunes far more neat and compact than their unwieldy name.

The crowd are pretty soon entranced, though, by the opening bars of Cache's first number, "Alchemical Cruise". Their stock in trade is a spangly, slow burning jazz club pop, with some quiet beautiful and sultry vocals. As such there's a touch of Eddi Reader, a whole swathe of Edie Brickell, and even a hint of Lloyd Cole.

The songs are built around both acoustic and muted electric guitars backed up by a selection of subtle sounds from the keyboards, and a couple of recorder and trumpet breaks, both played by the singer.

Lovely stuff, in short, but sometimes lovely just isn't enough. Maybe it's my jaded ears, but after the first few tracks "subtle" became "overly polite", ethereal edged towards "pedestrian", and "snug and lowlit" decayed into "dingy and crowded".

Cache are very talented musicians and songwriters who are clearly on top of their game. Unfortunately, their game at times resembles a drizzly no score draw. Perhaps with some more training they might suprise us next season. Perhaps they should work on stamina, as legs seemed to tire rather swiftly.

Perhaps this metaphor has gone on long enough - I don't even know anything about football.