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It's Valentine's night, and local promoters Twee Off have what can only be described as a night of anti-love music for the Norwich faithful, down at the wonderful Arts Centre, which is a converted church that has an intimate and wonderfully dark atmospheric charm about it.
Now, picture a time around 1990 when indie music was truly indie and pretty much an underground cult, with awkward kids playing guitars with an amateurish downward gaze and there you have shoegaze, tonight's bands complement that era fully.
Rory Hill of well known Norwich band The Kabeedies starts proceedings in the hushed silence of a small congregation in the main hall. He sings dark songs of relationship break-up, hatred and love with just him and his acoustic guitar.
La La Vasquez - Three girls hailing from the South East of England - are next and can be firmly categorized in the DIY C86 Indie movement of the aforementioned era. They are charming enough but are quite frankly not well practiced in a live environment, didn't play with any conviction, rhythm or stagecraft and are as loose as any band you could witness in a lifetime. Maybe that is their point, but they seem to carry their messy post punk tunes off with polite applause from the gathering audience between songs.
Onto the main event and Veronica Falls come on with confidence aplenty, and launch into 'Tell Me', what is apparent straight away is that they sound much more powerful live than on record without losing the harmonizing vocals which stamp their appealing style. The new album entitled 'Waiting For Something To Happen' has much more in the way of melody than the first but is also a real grower so I am really looking forward to the live versions.
Songs with titles like 'Buried Alive' and 'Found Love in a Graveyard' are ironically appropriate for such a venue as this and the lighting which is deliberately dark evokes a gothic atmosphere. As hoped, the new materiel sounds fantastic live and is well received by the crowd as they play new single 'Teenage'. The infectious 'Broken Toy' is met with enthusiastic head bopping and even dancing in the crowd and it soon becomes a joyous occasion all round! For an encore Veronica Falls do a fine Roky Erickson cover 'Starry Eyed' and then the brilliantly frantic 'Come on Over' finishes the set off wonderfully.
This band are on the road extensively for the next few months touring the UK, Canada, USA and back to Europe and even if they are unfashionable, they are an essential band to see live and destined for bigger venues as well as many exciting things in the future.
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article by: Nigel Nudds
photos by: Nigel Nudds
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| published: 19/02/2013 11:59 |
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