Brighton's best...
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Soledad Brothers...
review The Soledad Brothers have a fine Detroit lineage, their myriad interlinkings with The White Stripes spanning flat-sharing with Jack White, dating Meg White, and reciprocal guesting on each other’s albums from the scene’s gestation.Vocalist and guitarist Johnny Walker had a spell in the Detroit Cobras, the band supported The White Stripes on tour, and interestingly, it was the Soledad Brothers who actually taught Jack White to play slide guitar. Maybe these endless associations with the Detroit scene have become too definitive - hence tonight they emphasise, contrary to their Detroit sound, “We’re all from Toledo, Ohio". They have a nonchalant, distant And why shouldn’t they be appreciated for who, not where, they are? The Soledad Brothers have done well in their own right, their garagey blues-punk receiving plaudits from folk like revered DJ John Peel, manager of seminal rock band MC5, John Sinclair, and local legend Everett True, seen bopping away deliriously in the crowd tonight. They have a nonchalant, distant and fairly calm air tonight, which comes as a surprise having heard how interactive (okay, brawly) past gigs have been. Only drummer Ben Swank’s black eye hints at a more boisterous streak to compliment their filthy guitar riffs. Support came first from local band The Mutts, who sound like Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster meets The Doors (first Mutts number being particularly ‘LA Woman’), their frontman a tall and gangly Richard Ashcroft sort. Though their sound was a bit muddy they proved themselves well worth catching again alongside She Said, The Guillotines and Pony during the Brighton Rocks Easter Special (Concorde 2, 11th April). The Soledad Brothers came over Walking along to this gig tonight I passed two buskers in Kensington Gardens belting out some stunning blues that simply stopped passers-by in their tracks. Somehow the more self-conscious second support act Dooley Wilson could never quite match up to that exhuberant burst of raw, joyful blues heard then, his pained blues-gurning perhaps not quite consistent with the simplicity of his three-chord tunes. Hot on his heels, the Soledad Brothers came over like an early White Stripes, or a grimier, more bluesy Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Call it country blues or boozy garage rock, but whatever it was, the rapturous crowd lapped it up, Walker’s mop of messy curls soon becoming drenched amidst the riff-crunching and animated harmonica-playing. By the time Dooley Wilson reappeared on stage to add another layer of barfly-blues, however, we found ourselves hard-pushed to wait it out till the end of the gig. Somehow my attention was wandering back to Kensington Gardens, and a little slice of blues from the heart...
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