Quicksilver Medal

In one of the worst lyrics I've ever heard, John Lennon states, "a working class hero is something to be". I guess, but so is a lollipop lady, a rapist or an Iberian ribbed newt. He may as well have said, "a noun is a word that repesents a person, concept or thing". Anyway, here's an unrelated review.


THE WILD MERCURY SOUND/ DANCE A LA PLAGE/ LEWIS WATSON, Daisy Rodgers, Jericho, 24/2/12



Daisy Rodgers is doing something special. Every month their events, centred round the more accessible end of indie rock, are not only well-constructed and friendly, but encourage packed houses that must make musicians, customers and other promoters happy, surprised and murderously envious respectively. Tonight’s gig is no exception, a cohesive, amiable concert with a spectacular turnout, marred only by the typical Jericho curse of ceaselessly yabbering punters drowning out the quieter acts. So, we push to the front of the newly painted venue (now with the added vibe of a 1970s mental hospital), to hear Lewis Watson.

This young singer has apparently achieved over two million hits on YouTube. We admit to finding this slightly mystifying, but then again, we don’t quite see the attraction of Charlie’s finger appetite either. Lewis certainly has a very strong voice, with an impressive ability to phrase lines mellifluously, adding a little portamento at emotive moments. It’s a likable set, and impressively a Paolo Nutini cover fits snugly next to his own songs; on the down side, of course this means his songs sound like Paolo Nutini’s. Watson has a very significant talent, and we look forward to seeing him develop, but at the moment his music sounds too much like a Starbuck’s playlist to truly excite us. It’s early days, we could well be eating our words in no time.

Unlike Lewis, Dance A La Plage sound as though they’re fully developed already, with a supremely confident and veruca sock tight set of bouncy disco indie. This is a band that has clearly identified its sound, and worked hard to hone it in the live arena, with the strident vocals, the rubberised bass and the guitar-to-the-chin twiddles all inch perfect. Pity that it does exactly nothing for us, being not exactly bad, but aridly, sterilely forgettable. When the singer introduces an untitled track with the slip, “This one doesn’t have a song yet”, we conclude that old Freud knew a thing or two. Dance A La Plage clearly hit the spot for a number of people, but to us they’ll forever exist in the long dark Regional Battle Of The Bands Heat of the soul. Fair’s fair, they’d probably walk it.

A fizzing burst of guitar noise introduces The Wild Mercury Sound’s set, and whilst it’s hardly Merzbow, it sounds like pure energy after a polite evening. They play a full-blooded set mixing blues rock tall tales with emotive stadium paeans, and manage to pull off the all too rare trick of sounding enormous without simply turning the volume to the top, and this control allows the excellent, lightly yearning vocals space to soar. Perhaps the young, fresh-faced lads are a little clean cut to make this sort of emotional music work, and sometimes you want less Doogie Howser and more Howlin’ Wolf, but it’s nothing a decade or so of hard living and bad loving won’t cure. A rousing end to a decent night.