Gav Prentice
There are few voices as emotive as Gav Prentice. He invests everything in the delivery. It is raw and powerful. He hammers an acoustic guitar to underpin the vocal assault. He growls “My home town is burning down…” with enough ferocity to fear he’s not lying.
He also wears his accent proudly when he sings. It’s not something that works for everyone, but with Gav it is compelling and adds intrigue.
As the set progresses, he uses a keyboard to generate drum lines. Despite the minimal instrumentation, it provides a solid backbone. A full band might add some more energy on stage, but then many bands cannot muster the energy between all their members that Gav manages to generate by himself. What is certain – his sound could fill arenas. Powerful stuff.
Mitchell Museum
A wall of sound comes forth from keyboards, guitars and drums. Various clicks, burbles and swooshes emitting from a synth add atmosphere and presence.
Their banter is relaxed and welcoming. “These songs are all about football” they lie, in reference to the fact that the audience have (quite rightly) chosen Limbo over the Champions League this evening. It’s a riff they continue through the set to great effect. There’s a lot to like about this bunch.
The drummer jerks, almost robotically. His whole arms are involved in every snare hit. It’s impressive, even if he must be making it much harder for himself. That said, he uses a maraca as a drum stick on one song, so clearly convention is not a major concern.
“They won’t let the flood back in.” They layer their sound with countering vocal lines, which at times are sung with such intensity that they are reduced to yelps. They use dynamics to great effect, dropping to single echoing piano for a bar before the whole band thunders back in.
Jonnie Common
An evocative soundscape builds as the various sampled elements are dropped into place, before acoustic guitar and vocals pick out a sweet melody to contrast some darker lyrics. “Don’t cut out my brain, to put it in a box”
Samples, drum lines, echoes and other effects are combined so readily as to meld together into one encompassing sound. The samples range from instrumental to ‘found sounds’ of everyday life. He talks us through how one song is comprised entirely from samples taken from the noises made in his kitchen. Never has a toaster sounded so lovely.
Tying it all together is a rock-steady beat from a live drummer, Peter Kelly. At times minimal and spacious, but always funky, the live beats add a humanity and responsiveness that would be hard to replace. And the compulsive head-nodding that inevitably follows is never a bad thing.
As with every act tonight, he shows effortless charm and banter. In this case, it’s the unexpected showing off of copious leg hair that proves the magic ice-breaker. And he’s utterly at ease on stage. All the toaster sampling and voice manipulation is done with great humour that does nothing to detract from its effectiveness. If anything, the banter and songs mesh so well that there times when it would make more sense to consider it performance art.
A superb performance.
