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The Datsuns / Polyphonic Spree / Interpol / The Thrills NME Brats Tour @ the Astoria, London

NME TOUR

James Berry assesses the mass whiterobing of the 'New Rock Revolution' at the New Musical Express' inaugural self-aggrandizing ball.

08/03/2003

The New Rock Revolution, huh? It’s stamped on the tickets, it’s all over the walls, its got t-shirts for sale, its logo (oh yes indeed, it’s logo) beams from screens amongst jarringly edited clips. Even Britpop, possibly the most widely exploited genre in the history of popular culture and associated cheap tat, didn’t have a fucking logo! Never mind that only one – going on two – of tonight’s bands (not to mention acts spread across the rest of this fortnight of shows) could be considered members of this, ahem, revolution. But never let the facts get in the way of a good marketing strategy. Still, that aside, and the fact that the publication in question is shrinking in such a myriad of different ways, God bless ‘em for this tour.

These shows do tend to pack out from doors opening, and that’s testament enough to their necessity. Dublin’s The Thrills come out to a near full house with sway in their stride and a dazed glow on their faces, and you kind of hope and think they would if they were just playing to the merchandise stall. This is candy-centred West Coast pop of the sort Teenage Fanclub used to churn out before hitting mid-career auto-pilot, Velvet Underground guitary nonchalance, Beach Boy harmonies, just really bloody nice songs. And with able help (spiritual and physical) from the Poly Spree horn section they get all vivacious with a stunning version of current single ‘One Horse Town’. The first glimmer of sunshine tonight.

But, no, it’s gone gloomy again, natch. Interpol are gloomy – really fucking glooooomy – dark, almost expressionless, recluse, stony-faced, and a little bit new-wave gothic for good measure. And they can’t help being hair-on-the-back-of-yer-neck-electric for it. In the end. For all the blunt characteristics there’s an edge, when they pick up to speed, that could take off the ear of the unsuspecting. Opening with album intro, the creeping ‘Untitled’, may have been a dubious choice as it hobbled, lost, without punch, vaguely looking for its groove. But with ‘Obstacle 1’, ‘PDA’ and the real ice-breaker ‘Say Hello To The Angels’ penetrating in all directions, rhythms chopping and those dour lead-weight vocals keeping emotions at ground level, when the whole lot finally matches you can’t help but be stirred by it all deep down.

Out of numerous encounters, this is the first time we’ve seen The Polyphonic Spree on a stage that will take them all. Well, nearly – in a house with 24 tenants there could always be more room (and where would the laundry go, you rightly wonder?). They immediately live up to their probable tag as Soundman’s Worst Nightmare, seeming to the untrained ear like an unsettled Jools Holland bowel movement for roughly 10 minutes, but even then Tim Delaughter’s doe-eyed puppy/committed-loon balancing act hypnotises you into a delirious state of heightened glee. The man literally bounces off the walls, like a fallen angel on a pogo-stick with a stash of laughing gas, making Wayne Coyne look like Ozzy Osborne the morning after Halloween. And that kind of joy, as unnerving as it might be close-up, can’t help but be utterly contagious.

At one count, with a fully white-robed The Thrills on singing/clapping/jumping/arsing-about duties, there were about 28 bodies on stage, we think. You try counting that many moving targets – especially with the hyper-enthusiastic bearded choral member who disappears off the back of the stage almost as often as he’s on it. A visual feast matched limb for limb by a veritable multi-layered tropical fruit-cocktail of sound. By the time ‘Hanging Around’ and the increasingly immense ‘Soldier Girl’ arrive, most instruments have managed to jab through the delicate wall of sound and every inch of muggy Astoria air is rife with colourful reverberation. Special jaw-dropping praise this time goes to new song ‘2000 Places’, like Bowie bungee jumping off the Alps to the Sound Of Music. As ever there are very few appropriate words. You could talk about stealing the show, but they did it the honourable way.

All of which renders talking about the other bands kind of worthless now. And The Datsuns do nada to help that, treading an achingly clockwork, stodgy, lumpen, emotionless, male-testosteroned, cut-n-paste, watery bag of dire 70s metal sickness. We went to the little boy’s room during one nauseating bout of uninspiring indecent axe-fiddling, only to come back and find ourselves up to the neck in another. Or was it the same one? We were under the impression that the last two decades of alternative music were the necessary polar antitheses of this kind of spineless posturing? The audience thins out rapidly, the uber-fashionable types in Dazed & Confused garb continue to dance awkwardly, we wait for ‘Harmonic Generator’ (a tuneful break in the clouds) and then follow the sensible ones.

James Berry for Crud Magazine 2003©



23/10 6 Lemonheads Live
20/09 Reading Festival 2006
13/10 Murder By Death Live
07/03 6 For '06 - Roger Sisters
06/01 6 For '06 - Spinto Band
03/05 Camden Crawl
30/05 Hot Chip Live
08/05 Little Man Tate Live
10/02 Shout Out Louds Live
04/07 Wireless Festival
19/06 The National Live

05/09 Big Deal - The Immediate
09/10 Big Deal - C/O/R/D
29/09 Big Deal - Victorian English Gentlemen's Club
19/06 Big Deal - Scritti Politti
25/04 Big Deal - Little Man Tate
19/06 Big Deal - The Dualers
25/05 CoOrdinates - Editors
02/05 CoOrdinates - Grandaddy
22/02 CoOrdinates - Wily Mason
13/09/ CoOrdinates - Nerina Pellot
13/06/ CoOrdinates - Four Day Hombre


 
 
 

 

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