Brighton's best...
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Le Tigre & Gravy Train!!!!...
review Of all the bands to use exclamation marks in their moniker - see also Wham!, The Go! Team and !!! - Gravy Train!!!! are surely the most deserving of such lurid punctuation.Yup, that’s four - one each for Chunx, Funx, Hunx and Junx, the four horse-kids of the a-porn-calypse, riding a wave of sleazy electro-pop brat-rap and waggling their asses in your face as they canter by. So don’t be fooled by Funx’s composed limbering-up at the back there, it's just the prelude to a storm - and here comes Junx, already down to his undercrackers and just itching to share... “The best show we ever played was in Brighton at the Free Butt in 2003! Were you there?" hollers Chunx. A giant gargled “YearghhhH!" echoes back (honestly now, you can’t all have been there, the Free Butt’s weeny...). I’m thinking about that last gig too - a sprawling, snogging, beer-drizzled mess of sweaty, tattooed limbs and audio leads, hard to tell where the audience began and the band left off - and wondering how that will translate to a bigger venue. Especially with this gaping chasm twixt the stage and the punters. So’s Chunx: ‘Something’s coming between us...’ she drawls, ‘it’s like Lollopalooza...’. the four horse-kids of the No matter, they work the crowd just the same. Junx sheds his vest, and with admirable sartorial grace keeps those knee-high socks and pumps just so - then drops his pants, dance-mooning at the crowd. He wears a look that suggests he’s contemplating waggling his dick around too. Instead he singles someone out to accuse: “Eww, you look like my sixth grade teacher...he was sooo fond of me...". Junx spies a joint and begs for a toke, only to be rebuked by Chunx reminding him to 'stay professional!' and wait till after. "But I wannit nowwwW!" he wails, stamping his foot. Meantime skinny whiteboy beauty school graduate Hunx screeches pottymouth raps at Chunx and throws himself into Gravy Train!!!!’s carefully choreographed idiot-gymnastics - all leapfrogging and hip-thrusting, thrashing pom-poms and flinging themselves about like extras from zombie-disco gem ‘Thriller’. This is where Funx, who's been hiding at the back on keyboards, really shines - awful nimble, she does the splits an' all. Some say Gravy Train!!!! aren't very accomplished - I say they're kind of missing the big neon point. Just look at the definition of their name - it means ‘an occupation or other source of income that requires little effort while yielding considerable profit’ (a sound pointer for any youngsters contemplating future careers, surely). The band might also sweetly tell you that a 'gravy train' is what appears in a girl's knickers when she's excited. Whatever - ‘Hella Nervous’ is one of the finest songs ever written with such timeless lyrics as: “Long in the face, short in the wiener, sucking my mouth like a vacuum cleaner". Show me one line from The Killers’ oeuvre that matches that and I’ll eat Junx’s socks, I will. Long in the face, short in That Le Tigre follow this delicate treat is just the icing on the cake. But I’m all caked out, suffering an unlikely malaise - too much Le Tigre, brought on by seeing them three times since last album ‘This Island’ came out in October. I’ve been spoiled by Too Much Of A Good Thing. So there’s not a lot new to see, though they’ve ditched ‘I’m So Excited’ tonight in place of ‘New Kicks’. The latter received a bit of a slagging in certain quarters for being a bit, well, naff (but then creditable antiwar songs are notoriously hard to pen - see also The Cranberries' ‘Zombie’, Culture Club’s ‘The War Song’, etc). Tonight 'New Kicks' makes loads more sense against the backdrop of their video of New York's antiwar march, Le Tigre exiting while it plays to make their point. Despite indie-kid fears, not much has changed since they signed to a major label - except you can now get Le Tigre ringtones from their website. It's just the same damn fine feminist disco-punk as ever, all hard not to pogo to, particularly ‘Hot Topic’, ‘TKO’ and of course encore ‘Deceptacon’. Kathleen Hanna's voice maintains that breathtaking other-wordly yowl, akin to being simultaneously caressed, tickled and run over by a freight train. Spectacular. But for freshness and sheer barefaced cheek, the evening belongs to Gravy Train!!!!. Hella bleedin' marvellous.
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