Pusher @ The Shacklewell Arms, 10.01.15

The Yorkshire band, Pusher’s distinctly grungey, psychedelic sound made the Dalston venue, The Shacklewell Arms, the perfect venue for their gig. The murky and intimate venue provided a great setting for Pusher’s distorted sound, which has an almost ’60s feel. With this in mind, it was hard to ignore the obvious hints of the likes of Hendrix in the solos, with the lead guitarist playing his Tremolo bar like it was a high scoring round on Guitar Hero. This being said, Pusher are still very much a modern band, but the slightly retro feel provided an interesting alternative take on modern rock.

For a band with such chaos and distortion in their instrumentals, Pusher appeared surprisingly uniform in appearance tonight, with 4/5ths of the band wearing dark jackets, hopefully a coincidence. With a real Gallagher-style swagger, frontman James Gilroy was in great form, providing a strong vocal style not dissimilar to the likes of Tom Meighan of Kasabian and Theo Hutchcraft of Hurts. With an obvious time limit, they didn’t stop too much for interaction with the crowd, which was understandable, but you did feel that you couldn’t connect with the band as much as you’d like.

Despite showing obvious promise, Pusher’s live performance does need tweaking. Whilst not failing to impress musically, the amount of time Gilroy spent with his back to the crowd did come off as a little showy for a small band… However, Pusher show incredible potential and hopefully we’ll be hearing a lot more from these guys soon!

Keir Waller