Are Fronds Eclectic? (No, They're Mostly The Same Solo For Hours)

Quite an interesting review, this one.  In short, I felt that the Bevis Frond were quite dull, and seemed to play for an eternity.  I suspect my response was coloured by the fact the only thing I know about them in advance was an LP with Anton Barbeau, and his concise psych-pop songs aren't really indicative of what they do.  Still, they were so likeable on stage, and I respected their approach to dredging up old songs for fans and merch pricing so much, I effectively gave them a positive review...or at least tempered by bile.  Birds Of Hell were honestly great, though, and Shotgun Six are worth a visit.

THE BEVIS FROND/ BIRDS OF HELL/ SHOTGUN SIX, Divine Schism, The Jericho, 26/9/19

Local heavy psych favourites Shotgun Six deal in glassy-eyed riffing, and their main technique is to keep riffing until one of them starts hitting a big gong (not to be confused with hitting a gig bong, though this may also be relevant).  For all their New York cool, what they most resemble is a 60s London blues basement band gone wild.  They’re effectively The Yardbirds, if the yard were a prison yard and the birds were being forced to trudge round it until they’d walked off their heroic drug intake.

“This song’s set in the future.  And Great Yarmouth”.  The epic followed by the bathetic, it’s a perfect summation of Norwich’s Birds Of Hell, who spend 30 minutes squeezing huge emotions into cheap synthesised pop songs, and the bulges where they won’t fit make for fascinating listening.  “Spiderman’s Let Himself Go” is a melancholic rant about life on minimum wage delivered over the sort of cheeky tune Moogieman might come up with in a pensive moment, whereas “Practice Punching My hands, Son” is a breezy ambient wash coupled with an impassioned meditation on the complexities of masculinity that could have been penned by Idles.  It ends with a tossed off gag, which suddenly defuses the tension, as does the fact the vocalist looks like Cheech Marin with Heidi’s hairdresser.  This is the sort of excellent set you want to watch again as soon as it’s finished, to catch the subtleties you missed.

Less of a danger with The Bevis Frond, where one could pop to the bar, the loo and the local Co-Op, and return to find them on the same solo.  For theirs is psychedelia of the Keep On Chuggin’ school, exemplified by expansive blues-based rockers something like Hawkwind down the Sunday afternoon pub jam, where you might be forgiven for thinking a long solo exists to let one of them visit the carvery.  Not that we’re saying long-form rock and adept fretboard flightpaths are bad things, and the band does it with an affable effortlessness it’s impossible to dislike, but the best moment of the set is “He’d Be A Diamond”, a lovely little folky jangle that sounds like Richard Thompson trying to get on the C86 compilation.  Frankly, though, a cult band like this has bought the right to do whatever they want; when was the last time you heard an act with a discography stretching back over 30 years say “we’re going to do a new one” and get a rousing cheer?  So chug on, dear Fronds, you’ve earned it.