The Like / Giant Drag

Girls! Everywhere! There’s them three in their short skirts singing songs as The Like, then there’s the crazy one out of Giant Drag spitting on the stage and swearing her head off! Ok, there’s the modest Micah, the Drag’s drummer/keyboardist sitting quietly at the back – but what’s one flotsam winky in the face of such a gushing wave of lady cha-cha? Tonight, it’s all about femme-rock.

Giant Drag’s Annie Hardy is completely and utterly beautiful whilst abrasively and un-dauntingly mad to boot. She’s the wild girlfriend all the boys wish they had, but deep down knew they wouldn’t be able to handle. “Karma is a bitch!” she concludes, after stepping on stage to air her frustration over an incident involving her slipping on the banana skin that’d she’d set as a trap for someone else. “...And I had my lighter in my back-pocket too, so when I fell, it jammed into my ass... Speaking of jamming into my ass, this song’s called ‘You Fuck Like My Dad’.” People don’t know whether to laugh or cheer, so they do both.

Their lo-fi folk rumblings are made dynamic by Annie’s lingering, occasionally childlike voice, which trembles and growls, emitting the closest insight into her character you’ll find behind her provocative exterior. Deep in there, there’s a girl who just wants to be loved.

Someone inexplicably throws a sequined thong onto the stage, which the fidgety lead-singer immediately grabs and places on her head as a hair-band. The crowd are adoring of her off-the-wall charms yet, despite the absurdity of it all, she still manages to hover about it all like a shimmering queen of rightness.

Finishing off with ‘Kevin Is Gay’, people shout and applause with genuine glee. A portion of the crowd are so fulfilled with Giant Drag that they don’t even bother sticking around for The Like, and by the time they’ve taken the stage the atmosphere has some-what deflated.

To make matters worse, it seems lead singer Z Berg has a cold. Either that, or she just can’t sing, but seeing as she’s the one up there on stage, it’s best to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Not since The Donna’s has there been such an average indie outfit whose chief appeal lies in the unusual nature of the band being made up entirely of girls. These ones aren’t particularly charming and they’re songs don’t do much either. Pre-show, promotional booklets are handed out detailing the crazy rock and roll lives of the band (they once threw toilet paper about a hotel room and it looked like a hamster cage! Rock on!), but much like the performance itself, it comes across as tired and contrived. Songs like ‘June Gloom’ and ‘Falling Away’ have nothing inherently wrong with them, they’re just standard, innovation-free ditties that, coming just after the evocations of Giant Drag, seem vaguely redundant.

“Do you not fucking love us too?”, protests bassist Charlotte Froom, clearly feeling a little envy towards the wolf-whistles and proclamations of desire that Annie garnered in the moments before. People don’t even reply, people are bored. When Giant Drag’s Micah appears with a beer at the back of the crowd during The Like’s set, all attention is focused on him, as he’s mobbed by well-wishers and star struck teens.

Eyes on watches and thoughts wandering elsewhere, after the initial furrow of Giant Drag’s appearance, the show ends with a whimper.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.