Review: Communion New Faces Tour

Communion New Faces Tour: Luke Sital-Singh, Eliza and The Bear, Farewell J.R, Annie Eve

03/03/14 @ Cluny 2, Newcastle
NARC. May 2014

The fresh-faced offerings from the London-based Communion label graced the Cluny 2 as part of their national tour as four fledgling beacons for new music. The evening peaked early with Annie Eve's silky smooth tones and Farewell J.R's weave of ethereal layers and folky vocals before the commercially-friendly Eliza and The Bear hopped, skipped and jumped into Lumineers-esque fist-pumping choruses fated for festival singalongs. The sprightly fivesome will undoubtedly be appearing on the soundtrack of every festival montage VT this summer.

Having been longlisted for BBC's Sound of 2014 accolade, my expectations of Luke Sital-Singh as headliner were high. His faultless vocal ability seemed almost mismatched to the predictable, repetitive lyrics of his self-penned anthems. I couldn't help but compare the overly sentimental choruses of 'Greatest Lovers' and 'Nothing Stays The Same' to something which could easily be scattered in gold confetti and revealed as the American Idol winner's song. The well-spoken young singer-songwriter had perfected the inter-song audience patter, and with his closed-eyed catchy ballads I have no doubt he'll be the next Ben Howard or Benjamin Francis Leftwich, but his candid tunes are bordering on cheesy pop which needs to make like a cheddar and mature.

Review: We Are Augustines

We Are Augustines @ O2 Academy 2, Newcastle (05.10.12)

“Join a band, it’s the best fucking thing in the world,” bellows Billy McCarthy, lead singer of Brookyln-based We Are Augustines and leading contender for the most considerate frontman of the decade. In between his endearing deluge of thanks, he wins over the crowd with small talk about Newcy Brown (“wow so it actually comes from here?!”). As an audience, we seem all too accustomed to shelling out with the expectation of diva-ish, unappreciative bands, and it’s a heartening change to witness a group of guys doing something they evidently love, and with it expressing genuine gratitude to every single sweat-drenched, devoted ticket-payer in the packed full venue.

They’ve experienced their fair share of lows: following Billy’s schizophrenic brother tragically committing suicide came the demise of previous band Pela. After McCarthy reunited with Pela bassist Eric Sanderson, We Are Augustines rose from the ashes, earning themselves a rapidly flourishing following fuelled by their rocky road. With the highly emotive anthems of debut album Rise Ye Sunken Ships under their belt, their live show brims with impassioned sing-alongs led by McCarthy’s grainy roar, ‘Book of James’ prompting crowd-wide accompaniments. The small, elongated venue was an odd match for these ballads, which seem fated to be met with pints in the air and teary eyes in stadium proportions. As the piano-led ‘Philadelphia (The City of Brotherly Love)’ started the encore, the audience were brought together in a state of optimistic bromance before the awaited ‘Chapel Song’, a mesmerising ditty with heaps of emotional baggage chronicled openly by Billy beforehand. With a refreshingly grateful outlook on their music, We Are Augustines are a thoroughly rewarding and inspiring band to catch live. As David Letterman put it when they performed on the Late Show, “life is an ocean and we are all ships, if your ship has sunk, don't despair, don't lose hope, rise ye sunken ships.”

U.S. Girls and Foot Hair

Weds 24th Feb.
Head of Steam, Newcastle
Drone metal is quite the niche. It's not really a genre which is listed on many of our friends' Facebook profiles. In fact, it's probably down there with skiffle and South African psytrance. Hell you may have even stopped reading when you saw that this is about drone metal. Sticking up for these genre-specific underground metal bands is a standpoint I usually find hard to justify to those who aren't involved in it, unlike any scenario where I am the elaboratee- looking on doe-eyed and habitually intrigued about how preposterously varied this metal world actually is.
If I didn't know the Foot Hair vocalist personally, sporting his pig-head shaped black leather gimp mask, I'd probably have been a smidge scared as he peered from behind the eyeholes around the eager crowd in the characteristic cubby-hole of a venue, growling the lyrics to my new favourite of theirs- 'Casual Rape'. I'm not justifying it very well, I told you.
The feral and ritualistic nature of each individual instrument flows together and evolves through gnarly effects, making you aware of becoming slightly entranced as each song progresses. This five-piece will draw you in with their lack of boundaries and in any way traditional song structure.
Headlining the night was U.S. Girls hailing from Philadelphia, being not remotely plural. She rips and tears apart those old sickly sweet American pop songs and reconstructs them into her own DIY gritty renditions- meaning the potentially awkward stage set of just Megan Remy and her machines (and our two newly acquainted and unrestrained friends after catching an unavoidable glimpse down her baggy top). The vast contrast between grainy noise and pop ditties seems to fuse together using her suprisingly sweet voice as the glue. You could call it a political standpoint, a post-modern take on the stagnant American Dream. But I think it's like having an ice cream named after fish food with little chocolate fish. Why not? It seems wrong, but it just works.