Words originally for Outline Magazine
 |
| Peach Club live at The Cut |
Every so
often, Outline Magazine and BBC Introducing like to team up with OPEN to put
together a bill of some of our region’s best rising talent. Tonight, four such
acts take to the stage to wow a ready audience with their best tunes.
Peach Club have the difficult task of
kicking things off, but the group more than manage with their shouty feminist
punk numbers. Fronting the quartet is Katie Revell, a ball of energy and
enthusiasm with no reservations about getting her audience to “move – it’s not
fair for me to do all the work”. Her vocals are raw and fierce, matching
Charlie Hart’s gritty guitars and Becca Wren’s drumming, with Amanda MacKinnon
completing the aural immersion on bass. Tracks from their EP ‘The Bitch
Diaries’ sound rougher than they do on record, but pack a punch with their
honest lyrics and jerky tempo changes.
Another
new act, Dog’s Dinner, are second
on. The group have a darker, more sinister sound than their predecessors but
perform with a similarly in-your-face attitude, frontman Josh Whitmore-Lyons
routinely jumping off stage to rip the slightly tense atmosphere apart. A
looping video clip acts as their backdrop, showing fuzzy TV static and vintage
video game excerpts, a pointer that these guys don’t take themselves too
seriously. The music is mournful but aggressive, similar to Drenge and Jamie T
but with a psychy twist that almost certainly points Nirvana-wards. Dead Dog stands out for being the
catchiest number, and Chlorine ends
the fun in a sweat-fest of chemical catharsis.
Rory McVicar,
tonight’s penultimate act, draws quite a crowd, so as a first time listener I’m
intrigued to see what his performance holds. The singer/songwriter is backed by
an all-star ensemble consisting of members of Magoo, in a line up that “may only
exist for one night only”, and what turns out to be a stunning set of Britpop-esque
numbers. A grand rock sound tinges each song, lyric driven with a sentimental poetry,
which draws in fans old and new. A broken string followed by a second sees
McVicar turn to a more “experimental” style – I get the impression the songs
don’t normally sound how they do tonight – but how they do sound is neat, twee and thoroughly entertaining. After the
youthful, aggressive energy of our first two acts, the downbeat-ness is a
pleasant change, and as McVicar puts it, “slow songs sometimes make an
evening”. Couldn’t agree more.
Our
headliners are Mega Emotion, a trio
who describe themselves as, “two girls drumming over a sequenced beat; a guy
screaming his guts up”. They’re certainly not wrong, showing all of those
things as they dive straight into Brains,
a messy cacophony of bleeps and bangs, completed by droning vocals. The
three-piece wear ‘mumus’, long robe-like garments which adds a bizarre sense of
ritualism to the Django Django/tUnE-yArDs
reminiscent music, but they seem to be more of a bother than anything else. The
performance is slightly out of time and the soup of spacey alt-rock wubs,
groans and clicks into an indistinguishable noise in some places. But to deny
the group’s technical skills wouldn’t be fair – all three members play
percussion as well as guitars and keyboards interchangeably, producing an
incredibly unique sound compared to a lot of their local contemporaries. If
tonight is about showcasing up-and-coming local musicians then Mega Emotion
tick all the right boxes, but they need to straighten out their act if they
want to go to the next level. For a group with such an obscure aesthetic I’ve
no doubt they’ve got what it takes, but tonight seems like an off night,
leaving me disappointed.
And so ends the third edition of The Cut, a fantastic night by all accounts, offering a wonderful display of hot new talent from our very own region. Here’s to the next one!
Facebook: Outline Magazine / BBC Introducing Norfolk
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