As thunder and lightening rain down (literally) on Baron Towers the warm and settled weather of last weekend seems like a long time ago. Thankfully mother nature's clearly a music fan though as One Beat Saturday neatly avoided the frankly apocalyptic storms currently drenching anyone silly enough to go out in a vest and flip flops today. Anyway enough of the weather, it’s been a pretty impressive 12 months for
Birmingham bands/artists (at last) with PEACE, Swim Deep and Troumaca all
making names for themselves outside B-Town and Laura Mvula securing a top 10
album. Capitalising on all this One Beat Saturday gathered together another
dozen up and coming acts kicking off with These Kings’ impressive Editors go
math rock-ish set, Sugar (nope, not the Bob Mould version) who laid some cool
stoner vocals over twisted goth grunge guitars and Bad Moon who funked the
place up a little with slap bass and a 60s underground meets 90s indie vibe. Next
up poet Ian Bowkett made the first of several appearances, rather brilliantly
capturing what it’s like to be young and in love these days (alcohol seems to
be a pretty important lube...as it were), a theme he winningly returned to
throughout the day/night. Youth Man’s punk fuelled assault on the senses were a
real highlight, with blisteringly paced tracks running headlong into sludgier
territory whilst Cold, released last year as a single, revealed a more soulful,
reflective side. Punk Anansie anyone?
Racing’s laidback retro funk grooves
provided the perfect afternoon summer soundtrack (impressed with the moustache
on the keyboard player too). Check out this bad boy, cooooool eh?
They paved the way for Grafham Water Sailing Club to
twist heads with their motorik beats and disintegrating Joy Division drums. So
good in fact that they set off the fire alarms (no mean feat in an outdoor
gig). Unlike most of today’s bands Velvet Texas Cannonball have been around for
a while and all that experience showed as they put on the kind of set that fans
of classic rock (think The Doors, Free, Led Zeppelin) would happily sell their
denim jackets to witness. Wide Eyed’s take on shoegaze added some neat Smashing
Pumpkins style riffs to the mix leaving Dumb to undermine The Pixies’ comeback
with a set of tracks that nudge close to Black Francis at his bitter best. Here's their latest track, uploaded mere minutes ago...
The
impressive number of Jaws t-shirt wearing audience members were rewarded with their
particular brand of jangly 90s style indie rock that fellow B-Towner’s PEACE
and Swim Deep have successfully revitalised. They got the biggest crowd up and
dancing too...well swaying from side to side at least.
That just left Boat To
Row to folk things up at the end. Closing their set and the whole wonderfully
eclectic event with their plucking beautiful love song and ‘theme tune’, A Boat
To Row, To Row To You, brilliantly demonstrated that Birmingham’s certainly
moving to more than just one beat these days.
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