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Kinesis, Water Rats, London, 09.11.01

Bolton band Kinesis. They look mean, they sound mean - but then they go and spoil it all by saying something stupid. Well doing something stupid, anyhow.
28/11/01

KINESIS

Disaffected teenage youth is obviously a mainstay of our popular culture, generations after they first got the idea and, judging from the state of things these days, probably for as many generations as we have left to come. But where's the actual evidence of this adolescent unruliness in the recent couple of years? Billie? Britney? Charlotte Church? Er, hardly. They're more likely stuck in military procession behind the colossal angst wagons pulled by Marilyn Manson or Fred Durst. Yet it was only a few years back in the mid-nineties that every other kid seemed to tumble out of nursery (alright, middle school) and into a pair of tatty jeans with a second hand guitar slung around their necks. Symposium, Ash, Midget, Kenickie etc - none actually had much to say that was worth listening to (Kenickie's irrelevant irreverence excepted) but they cobbled together a vaguely inspiring racket.

Which makes the fact that in recent memory their urgency has been seemingly lost to a bundle of kids over the voting age and more concerned with style such a massive shame. And don't even think about mentioning the Dum Dums, please. But it also marks out the arrival of Manchester's intelligent pre-GCSE post-grunge tykes Kinesis as a refreshing breath of fragrantly manky air. You'd possibly be right not to crave a return to the indie-charts-as-crèche days, it's true that the prerequisite buoyancy was not always matched with balls, but if Kinesis haven't quite got the weight behind them yet they're certainly pushing in the right direction. Hurtling out of Bolton sometime earlier this year with their own self-financed mini-album 'Worship Yourself', the hint was there that the accomplished strop-soaked angst stemmed much deeper than a mere disaffection for their Friday afternoon timetable.

And that hint's there again as they stroll onto the Water Rat's tiny stage draped in t-shirts reading like impish young Manics slogans: 'sanity is not statistical' and 'shopping is not creating' (no, us neither, but they SOUND like they mean SOMETHING, which is more than a start). Then they explode through a set way beyond their years, half inching the interesting bits from the Flaming Lips, the angry pop bits from early Nirvana and a mouthful of raw gristle from The Pixies. Bolton singer Michael alternately sounds like a stoned Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan and looks like he's nearly pulling it off. Tight, succinct and desperately hungry, highlight 'So We Fly' comes on like 'Wild Thing' played as if it's the 'Teen Spirit' riff bound in a hook Tim Wheeler would ritually sacrifice his Granny for. As the US rocks itself into a coma, dragging up the dormant end of the genre, Kinesis manage to remind us what was great about grunge and show us how it can still sound rousing with some imagination. Let's hope they can act on it before they get old and dull.

James Berry for Crud Magazine© 2001

 
 
 
 

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