LIVE: Club. The Mammoth All-Dayer – Liverpool Arts Club, 21.01.17

Urban mini-festivals are abound these days, and Liverpool is blessed with them. Organised by the folks at Club. The Mammoth – promoters, djs and indie label types from Brighton and London – this all-dayer is sistered with a similar mini-festival taking place at London’s Kentish Town Forum on the 28th January.  Both nights essentially share the same concept, but only a few of the same bands, including headliners The Fall.

The Fall

The day started with hotly tipped up-and-coming Liverpool faves Pink Kink, opening to an already impressive crowd in the loft.  The band reeled off one confident performance after another, fusing a wide span of different sounds together.  Their influences ranged from the ambient harmonies of Warpaint, the yelp of Siouxsie Sioux and Poly Styrene, surf-rock guitar sounds and – with the band’s ability to shift tack and mood on a whim – there was even a hint of jazz on top of an unashamedly riot grrl emphasis.

Pink Kink

Next up are Ohmns, (another) Scouse four-piece garage band, but they edge towards a sort of sludgy grungy drone, spiced up with a little Scouse wit.  Amongst several shout-outs, the band lament the price of a beer and mention that their bassist (normally of The Floormen) had to learn the set in super-quick time because “that dickhead [ie. the usual bassist] broke his wrist in Amsterdam”.  It’s entertaining stuff as the band scream, pound and sweat through a belter of a set, leaving everything they can on-stage.

Goat Girl

Following all of that aggro were Goat Girl, the first of the bands also playing the London all-dayer. It was a more relaxed sound than Ohmns, but was still headier stuff than Tigercub –  who were next on the bill. It’s possible that after being blown away by seeing Ohmns on the same stage, Tigercub suffered by comparison.  Having listened back to them since, I feel like there’s a decent garage band in there somewhere, but I didn’t see it live.

Tigercub

Finally, rounding off a trilogy of bands with animals in their names, Eagulls played the first really substantial support slot of the evening.  They have a slightly ’80s take on psych-drone, which veers into post-punk, goth and New Wave territory, most reminiscent vocally of Killing Joke. It’s a bombast, slightly undercut by sound issues which leave much of the vocals indistinct, and a slightly bemused audience unsure exactly what to make of the combination of the sounds.

Eagulls

Next it was back up the stairs for the somewhat deceptively-named Kagoule. Lead singer Cai wears a boiler suit and has cropped bleached hair, but rather than being stark and confrontational, comes across as the nicest guy in the room as he freely admits to ripping off Placebo’s ‘Nancy Boy’ for one of his songs verses. And he’s not lying, but it’s still great.  Much of the vocals are shared between Cai and bassist Lucy, whose voice freely switches from melodious to screams.  A weird, familiar, dark, joyous bouncing set from a group that are the surprise package of the night.

Kagoule

I miss Hookworms, but am in prime position to witness the hype band of the moment – Cabbage. They’re probably the most relentlessly aggressive thing I’ve seen in quite a while. Endless screeching of both guitars and vocals means their song melodies are barely distinguishable in a wall of white noise.  Somehow, though, it works.  In fact, it works incredibly well.  By about the third song it’s impossible to turn away. Beer and people are thrown around in a squall matching that emanating from the speakers.

Cabbage

Given all that, it almost feels like something of an anticlimax when The Fall finally take to the stage, nearly half an hour late and after a couple of false starts. Mark E. Smith has essentially become a kind of ‘Hip Priest’ for a cadre of hardcore fans, whilst the rest of the crowd look on, bemused, as he strides round the stage, hitting amps with his microphone and directing the band to start and finish songs at his discretion, like a kind of Mancunian Cab Calloway.

Seeing Cabbage and The Fall back-to-back throws into sharp relief their relative energies and abilities to delight and enthrall.  Cabbage are the new noise that even the tabloid press have turned on to; The Fall are a curio of British indie music because of their longevity, their obliqueness, their reluctance to conform.

John McGovern

Photo Credit: Jon Mo

John McGovern

John McGovern

John McGovern

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