Brighton's best...
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Pink Grease...
review All backing track and shouty vocals, tonight’s support act Kangarucci are the lary male Ping Pong Bitches. I’m seeing some kind of beautiful ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ style electrotrash marriage, and it frightens me to think of their progeny."I’m seeing some
kind of beautiful ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ style electrotrash marriage" Endearingly they don’t appear to care that the stagelights haven’t come on as they chant and gyrate drunkenly in the dark. Clearly raised on the Beastie Boys and ninja-themed Playstation games, they are throwing hip hop shapes and rolling about on the floor. Their cheekily obnoxious last track, probably called ‘I Smoke, You Choke’, is about the joys of nicotine. With the lights now on we observe that Kangarucci are indulging in brazen, full-on cigarette smoking. Ye gods. They’d go far - in the Happy Mondays. Kangarucci vacate the stage for Pink Grease, and we spy the silliest guitar ever - it’s red and shaped like a machine gun. And John the skinniest man in the world is playing it. He’s working the heroin chic look to full effect. In fact it’s tempting to define Pink Grease by the drugs they appear to have consumed. There’s lead guitarist Steve, all afro, goggles and lurid lipstick, who speaks feverish mushrooms-martian into the mike between songs; and impish bassist Stuart who leaps around demanding the audience hi-five him repeatedly, with a facesplitting grin that suggests his pills are just kicking in (it’s because he’s really excited to be on stage though, a la Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, apparently). And peroxide singer Rory Lewarne - he's the tricky one in this cheap, hackneyed line of thought. Studiedly louche, sleazily glamorous and slightly possessed, clearly something inhuman fires him, even if it’s just the ghost of 50s garage rock. Quite different to the Busted style, he scissorkicks from the knees; it’s as if Penelope Pitstop is only playing at being petrified of the Hooded Claw - a demi-"Haylp!" if you will. He climbs onto the bar, then flings himself off and sprawls across the floor, holding a pose remarkably akin to the painting ‘The Death of Chatterton’ for a moment before surging back to life. "Studiedly louche, sleazily
glamorous and slightly possessed, clearly something inhuman fires Lewarne, even if it’s just the ghost of 50s garage rock." Pink Grease used to be called the Buttfuckers, though they’re not gay, right? They are however a wall of noise, bursting with energy and very, very Crampsy during songs like the damn fine ‘Fever’ and the less memorable 'Remember Forever'. Perhaps not surprisingly there's more than a hint of Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster in there too. 'Peaches' is fairly standard garage fare, but it's new single 'The Pink G.R.E.A.S.E' that's really their finest moment, all handclaps, squealing sax, Jagger-esque vocals and falsetto chorus. Up against Electric Soft Parade at the Komedia tonight, Pink Grease still hold their own drawing a healthy crowd. It’s hard to snub a good dose of electro rock’n’roll. Perhaps this one’s going to run and run...
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The Village Street Party 2008
