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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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