by Graham Rice
Tonight, it seems, is a night for the students. The smell of processed chicken bites permeates the air, while the beams from the lighting rig clumsily refract through smuggled translucent water bottles, raised in the air, from frugal concert-goers who aren’t planning to go to the bar. Tonight the Wedgewood Rooms plays host to a selection of Art-Rock bands.
Kassassin Street blast onto the stage with a solid slab of indie-rock, albeit with a generous helping of pretention. This reaches dangerous proportions when the bassist employs a violin bow to sound out a few notes, but they are a young band so I imagine they’ll grow out of it. They played a solid set of endearingly naïve, bratty indie – part jangly Placebo, part whiny Strokes. An interesting edge to the band was the use of a laptop, spewing out the sounds of an old Roland TB-303, its operator performing the strangest dancing I’ve seen in a while – like Bez rattling a Kinder Egg to guess its contents. They end the set with their best offering; a standout track with brash guitars, and a searing saw tooth 303 bass line. If more of their set sounded like this, they’d be on their way to being a great band.
Yorkshire-based Skint and Demoralised are next to take the stage, who pull no punches with their refreshing brand of punk-infused indie. Their subject matter ranges from acid-tongued lambasting of the BNP, to hazy-eyed reminiscence of the seaside; from Cameron to Cardigans, the Budget to Butlins. They end their set with a politically-charged prose attacking their local BNP members, leading into a delightful Cockney Rejects-inspired punk number in a similar vein.
Art Brut arrive, immediately launching into Guns n’ Roses’ Paradise City as a prelude to their ode to the band’s front man – the eponymous Axl Rose, from their new album Brilliant! Tragic! South London’s Art Brut were tagged by NME as part of the “Art Wave” along with bands such as The Rakes, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party, and rose to prominence after a journalist forwarded an Angular Recording Corporation compilation, including one of their songs, to Rough Trade. The rest, as they say, is history.
Front man/anti-singer Eddie Argos, looking like a young Frankie Howerd, navigates the stage with the grace and intention of a drunken Dad at a wedding; stumbling around the stage as a visual demonstration of the band’s often chaotic musical nature.
It is charitable at best to call Argos a singer – as a collective it’s a stretch to even call some of their offerings ‘songs’ – but to call him out of tune is as irrelevant as it is axiomatic. Most of the musical aspects of the songs; the melodic twin guitar assault of Ian Catskilkin and Jasper Future, as well as the solid, groovy bass work of Freddy Feedback, tend to take a back seat to Argos waxing lyrical – from the dangers of being a semi-successful band, to the time he went to an art gallery. At times the set feels more like an art-rock sermon – but Argos always makes it clear that he is the Reverend, and the rest of the band are simply the choir – almost clandestine in comparison to Argos’ bombastic stage antics. He is a curious front man – he has the earthy pathos of Parklife-era Phil Daniels, with this impeccable comic timing of Stewart Lee. It’s true that the lyrics lack melody, but as he says himself in Formed a Band, ‘it’s not irony, it’s not rock and roll – we’re just talking to the kids’.
They move on to on the lash anthem Lost Weekend - a groove-ridden Rakes-a-like number, where Argos has an attempt at singing but, aptly, it’s an entirely croaky affair – the vocals sounding like they’re being performed just after the weekend in question.
As well as fan-favourites such as the upbeat Alcoholics Unanimous and Pump Up The Volume, we are treated to a new song in the form of Arizona Bay, a which gives a more than subtle nod to Beach Boys classic, Surfin’ in the USA.
Although the songs are great on their own merits, live is where this band excel; demonstrated by their next track, the lumbering Modern Art, in which Argos descends into the audience, encouraging a mass squat whilst he regales us with another story-cum-rant, this time almost beheading a few hardened fans with his microphone cable, now taut because of the depth at which he has ventured into the crowd.
The band are encouraged back to the stage for three encore songs, including their 2004 Eurovision entry Good Weekend, accompanied by an impeccable drum solo by Mikey Breyer, reminding us, quite succinctly, that this is not just a one-man show.
In this writers opinion, Art Brut are one of the best live bands around. If I had to find fault, it would have to be the lack actual singing, but to say Argos’ vocals lack melody is like saying your ham sandwich lacks salmon; true, but it doesn’t stop you enjoying your ham sandwich.
I saw Art Brut last night in Brighton. They were majestic. As usual. I echo your concluding sentiment “Art Brut are one of the best live bands around”. Long may they reign over us.