IN THE CITY: SUNDAY
Pen? Check. Guide? Check. Industrial quantities of cheap energy drink? Check.
Identically coiffed and dressed London duo MIDIMIDIS attempt to shake the Electric Boogaloo with their warmed-over cyberpunk. At times they're frenetic and splenetic, but mostly they're lost in their own mannered poses. Get 'em off!
Down the road at Studio, the twelve-legged genre-disregarding misfits Asakusa Jinta flail and twirl like a Japanese Gogol Bordello; enthusiasm becomes an Olympic event and the wackiness dial clocks 11. Continuing the international theme are French trio The Tatianas, whose diet-Strokes filth should have stayed in the garage, possibly with a running car.
Asakusa Jinta
At Cellar Vie, hushed appreciation greets the post-modern folk wanderings of Sweet Baboo, a solo set laced with humour and consummate ease. Fellow Welshmen Dirty Goods receive muted plaudits back at Boogaloo, an apt venue for their Patrick Bateman-approved coke-pop. Problem is, it's all a bit knowing and slick. Where they could rock out and give some catharsis to their tightly-wound tunes, they cop-out with the '80s synth crud.
Sophie Madeleine and her ukulele are badly cast against the echo-doom of Bar 38; the soft wispy matter that makes up half of her material is lost in a cloud of chatter, but she battles on bravely. “This is a song I wrote about knitting” she says, placing her firmly in Camp Twee before a note is plucked. Sparse and lovely, with a backing duo every bit her equal, it's the first discovery of the festival.
Sophie Madeleine
The first existential crisis arrives during Fangs' set. They chase the zeitgeist too hard. They are both flap and doodle. They both fluster and bluster. Their electro-sex-attitude shtick looked a joke on C4's MobileAct Unisgned; up close it's a complete sham. MAY68 patrol a similar musical territory, but their motorik-meets-Heaven 17 jams work for all the reasons Fangs' don't; they look like they're having fun, they bothered to finish writing beyond the first hook, and they're all much better-looking.
Whilst In The City brings together the up-and-coming talent from around the UK and beyond, Sunday night belongs to Mancunian talent. Envy is a fearsome young rhymer with a dizzying, kaleidoscopic flow and adroit stage presence born out of brutalising MC battle opponents. Her put-downs are lacerating enough, but its the sweetness between songs that really disarms. A distinctive production is all that separates her from glory.
You could lob an anti-tank missile in front of Kong and they'd still slay. Their masks make them look like sex tourists and their scathing rock-on-steroids is more divisive than the monarchy, but they couldn't care less, crushing mercilessly all the while. 'Leather Penny' is a punch to the abdomen. 'Blood of a Dove' is a knee to the face. The rest of the set works you over with sadistic delight. By the end, you've either left the venue screaming as if your hair is on fire, or you're a committed masochist.
Dutch Uncles
Band of the night: Dutch Uncles. Frontman Duncan Paton is the first person on stage all evening who radiates star quality; the ignorable smart kid at school all grown-up. His nervous tics and karate dances provide a visual hook for songs prone to tangents; 'Face In' is their version of a pop song, except the verse hook owes more to Steve Reich than Stevie Wonder. Anything difficult is tempered intelligently by Paton's ghostly voice, but no one is left waiting too long for the next rapturous pay-off. A rare find; and they're local. No excuse not to see them at the next opportunity, right?
Started coming down with an illness on Monday; battled through, but couldn't be arsed by Tuesday.
IN THE CITY: MONDAY
People are emerging from The Bay Horse toilets clutching their noses self-consciously at the rock'n'roll hour of half past six. Nonetheless, Dan Melrose ploughs through an intimate set pitched halfway between fearful, earnest blues and ornate folk guitar. Its in the latter mode he really shines; 'The Dove' displays playing chops, detailed arrangement and the knack for an earworm of a melody.
Graphic
A sickeningly hip young chap is hunched over his mate's laptop at TV21, awaiting the start of his set. He is Graphic. There's not much in the way of charisma, or even apparent enthusiasm. It all feels a bit Vice until the former Isaac Llewellyn Holman (ah, a fine working-class lad) rips out a few lines over his summery electro agenda and a star in the Just Jack mode is conceived, if not quite born.
Every song in the set of Copy Haho sounds like a potential winning hit, except the song they announce as being an actual single ('Wrong Direction'), which is brilliant nonetheless. For a band from a pedestrian griefhole in Kincardineshire facing the relentlessly dour North Sea, they've emulated taken great urban guitar scene since 1980 and refracted it through 1000 points of light and a deathless ball of energy. More please.
Culture Reject loops live percussion and does the singer-songwriter bit over the top, but it falls flat a heightened rate of knots. Up the road at Electric Boogaloo, Ed Sheeran does the same kind of loop/guitar/voice as Mr. Reject, but succeeds in every area he fails. An almost unbearably magnetic performer with a knack for a three minute pop job that would rival all of Xenomania. Sheeran's potential is practically criminal; he's 18 and you can sense he'll get better with age. The bastard.
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