The Sunshine Underground / Rumble Strips / The Whip

With New Rave now dissolved, the team players forced to drive their careers with – can you believe it – their individual merits, can The Sunshine Underground out run the destructive force of the genre implosion? Datarock went into hiding after their New Rave flirtation and are coming back next month re-invented as Norwegian pop-wonders. Shitdisco weren’t so lucky, used giant tube lights on their album cover that looked a lot like glow sticks (passé), then went on a tour that hardly anyone turned up to and had to be cancelled half way through because one of them got ill.

The Sunshine Underground are in a less daunting position, the Leeds four-piece weren’t pushed too hard as New Rave purveyors and without an ounce of neon in sight, their image has always remained closers to Oasis than Klaxons.

Before them though, we’ve Manchester’s The Whip to contend with, a four piece electro gang who’ve got the looks but not the hooks, heavy beats but low on treats. They’ll probably get their moment in the spotlight soon enough, this kind of electro indie is in vogue, sure, but it doesn’t have that much charm in its own right. Actually, I’m going to go out on a limb: it’s just boring.

Then it’s the turn of the Rumble Strips, who play, er, new-jive? Brass-infused, piano-tinkled indie stomp, that has all the right constituent parts but isn’t mixed together in the right quantities. Every time you think they’re going to drop a great hook, they don’t, then every time a good noise does come out of them, they move on from it before anyone’s had a chance to get into it. Oh, and the lead singer looks bored as f*ck.

People use the two support acts as time to get drunk on the bar’s two-pint beers, so by the time The Sunshine Underground come on, the whole place seems to be swaying from side to side and letting out an abnormal amount of sweat and dribble. They come to a rapturously received ‘Put You In Your Place’, and from start to finish the drunk disciples on the dancefloor, march, mosh and make mischief as the self-proclaimed ‘ultimate party band’ play a load of disco-friendly indie.

In the headline slot some of the bands lesser tracks filter through, there’s moments of big-beat but tune-free filler in the middle of the set... but when they drop massive, mind-wrecking songs like the anthemic ‘Commercial Breakdown’, the place goes absolutely wild and rightly so.

Promising to be back soon with new songs, as they leave the stage the crowd bay and cheer for more. Throughout the whole evening no more than a dozen glowsticks are spotted, suggesting The Sunshine Underground have made it through to the next stage. But ultimately, who cares about genres and niche? Tonight the band put on a brilliant, high-energy show that leaves the crowd satiated and in awe. What more could you want?

FUTURE GIGS

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