The Great Escape 2010
For many people, The Great Escape conjures up images of men’s men jumping barbed wire on a motorbike and pulley operated trolleys. For others it’s the sound of all that is promising in the world of music; replete with seagulls on backing vocals. If a new music selection hyzaar box tickles your gristle then The Great Escape is much more than a perennial “on offer” DVD at HMV.
Kicking off the MOJO curated Komedia was youngster Joe Worricker, who looks like a baby-faced Vernon Kaye and is just another in the long line of artists lazily branded “the new Amy Winehouse”. Yet for all this, Worricker’s buy penicillin voice and liberal approach to enunciation makes him sound more like a retarded South African than a soulful jazz hound. Much better were Montreal’s Final Flash, a sixties psychedelia obsessed five piece who bash out folky rock n roll on a stage made out to look like Mr Tumnus’ LCD trip. It’s the best use a cherry red double-neck Gibson since Jimmy Page defined a generation with his.
Owning arguably the best voice of the entire festival, Daisy Dares You and her brand of bubblegum punk, coupled with her CJ-era Pamela Anderson look are sure to gain her much attention. The live show is a typically primal affair though falls flat when veering into Avril Lavigne territory. This isn’t something, however, that Belgian folksters Isbells are capable of. Fearing for those at the back of the ultra-slim Terraces, the troupe clamour through the audience, instruments in tow, to stand on a wall in the middle of the bar to end the set acoustically. The silence that befell The Terraces stood as testament to the enraptured audience.
Following Isbells were the mighty Goldheart Assembly, a Fleet Foxes for those who don’t like Fleet Foxes. Florida codes bank Goldheart take the low-fi folk of their American peers and inject a little British eccentricity into its hashish stained beard. Singles King of Rome and So Long St. Christopher explode in the middle like a post-punk Nagasaki before resuming the sepia pop exactly where it left off. A few technical problems – whilst curtailing the set – did nothing to dampen the band’s spirits, with joint frontmen James Dale and John Herbert punctuating the songs with quips so damn good it makes you wonder whether they were as practised as the songs themselves. Set closer Oh Really is a glam rock stomper that has all those queuing outside for Fionn Regan wonder exactly what is was they missed out on.
Friday’s matinee gigs began on the pier, with Australia’s Dappled Cities and their antipodean take on Britpop. Singer D ave Levitra generico Rennick looks like Matt Smith, had he revved up the TARDIS and set the dials for the 1990s with The Lightning Seeds jammed firmly in the cassette player. Finn Vuk followed, with her banshee caterwauling even making the backing band flinch. Across a vacant dancefloor my eyes met with those of the o Vardenafilo levitra rganist; eyes that said “sorry”.
Digital is a venue. Zithromax pharmacy Think About Life is a band. Both are hot, loud and made for partying. Canadians TAL tore up the crowded room, sending those amassed there into frenzied dances that belied the seven o’ clock time slot.
Just next door to Digital is The Coalition, though the bands couldn’t be more disparate. Steely melancholia with a barely beating heart of eighties pop was the order of the day for both Wolf Gang and Hurts. Wolf Gang and his band race through their Orange Juice/Talking Heads influenced experimental pop, stopping only to offer the obligatory thankyous to an ever-swelling crowd. The music is focussed and driven, relentless touring having rounded the edges enough to make for a tight sound but not so much so that it rolls over and begs to be sodomised by the Radio One playlist.
All the while, the stone arches and hyperactive smoke machine fills The Coalition with anticipation, atmosphere and the smell of dry ice; then behind the thickening fog a dimly lit stage begins to fill. Mancunian sartorialists Hurts should have a film noir narrator introduce their set. They look like Bros filming a Brylcreem advert in Marks & Spencer’s window but make ethereal music that sounds like the funeral of dance. Singer Theo Hutchcraft has seemingly taken lessons in frontmanship from Faris Rotter, issuing an OCD rock n’ roll sermon like a furious televangelist, flailing and waving in a way that must’ve sent air traffic controllers or those fluent in sign language scarpering to their vocabulary books. Order Doxycycline
If there was one thing Hurts stumbled Lasix Online on though was their reluctance to go too big. Despite having an opera singer on backing vocals and a sound that would send even the most haunted of houses screaming towards the nightlight, they only teeter on the brink of bombast before turning about face. A heady prescription of Sigur Ros twice a day and the duo may have something huge on their hands.
The Pier’s final matinee shows see Polish tykes Car is on Fire coming over here, taking our dancefloors by storm. Levitra reviews How dare they Cheap Levitra online? The jovial funk-poppers engage the crowd (at first a little too forcefully) and seem to be having the most fun of anyone on the bill. A marked difference to Detroit Social Club who look and sound as though it is painful to even be on stage. The bilious banter is all well and punk but the four angry men on stage splutter their way through the set. The music is suitably angry, sounding like it was made by four rapscallions on parole, but is too uninspired to set anything, or anyone alight. An afternoon slot in a prestigious seafront hotel maybe wasn’t the best marketing ever witnessed.
Bridezilla on the other hand made the most of their daytime billing, basking the otherwise pitch-black Digital in experimental fuzziness. For a band who freely admit they are only just getting Buy Brand Levitra Online Pharmacy No Prescription Needed started their shambolic noise (what the NME would undoubtedly dub post-jazz if they got their hands on it) is beautifully chaotic, like an absinthe comedown in the Garden of Eden.
The Blogworld’s newest fetish, Frankie & The Heartstrings played a set that could well pitch them beside their Sunderland brethren (and Great Escape’s secret band) The Futureheads. Frankie Francis is the greatest rock frontman in training, his forays into the crowd and onto the barriers galvanise an audience already close to hysteria and the band’s attitude during soundcheck – offering to take pictures of those too drunk to hold their camera at arm’s length and turn it around etc. pitches them as contenders for the nicest men in rock. Buy antibiotics online without prescription. Online Drugstore. A jagged, noisy climax signals the end of the set, Francis punching the ceiling whilst guitarist Michael McKnight inadvertently and rather comedically trashes his guitar. buy drugs online You can hear the rest of the band laughing over the feedback.
“What a Great Escape” Francis says before leaving the stage. “What a Great Escape.”
