Coiled at the feet of a bill including hotly-tipped yet knowingly quirky and equally irksome analogue electropop outfit erm... Outfit and indie flimsy from the tenacious, if atrocious Fiction, Towns represent the ravenous and rabid underdog outsiders, incongruous to all around them and infinitely more engrossing than the lot. Surges of impeccably engineered shoegaze emanate from Jon-Paul Beaumont's hollowed-out howler of a Gretsch, their overwhelming verve barely concealed by forcibly straightened face as they tear into forthcoming single Just Everything with the avid heave of a leashed hound angling for blooded game laid agonisingly, tantalisingly out of glinting-toothed range. Barely do swells of pedalboard manipulation abate before we're hauled back to a hazy Utopia circa '94 by the seething and strident majesty of Gone Are The Days as the gleaming guitar sheen of The Seahorses glosses wondrously over an increasingly vibrant rhythm section and gently dissonant vocal harmonies. For while the brace of bands that follow strive, struggle, and ultimately botch futile endeavours to whip up maniacal vehemence via a circumspect blend of already-approved influence, Towns are unashamedly and inextricably clamped to the decade to have accommodated their formative years: they continue to emulate the music they revere to in turn breed their own for which they exhibit equivalent enthusiasm, subsequently remaning true to themselves and their record collections.
They beef things up with new one Marbles, before baying for blood and spitting woozy spirals of heady abstraction on a maddening Heads Off, the track as loose and languid as ever although its melding now mirrors the clingy tightness and tensity of spandex-enhanced denim. The exuberant Fields is omitted, left behind somewhere between here and there on the M4, before they end with a gloriously emphatic Everyone's Out that eventually descends into MacLucas rubbing a newly acquired Jaguar up against a nearby amp in all the right ways, drawing an almighty splurge of feedback from its unsuspecting valves. In blacked-out trainers and breton stripes tonight, a definitive style has been cultivated aesthetically to accompany their distinctive and distinctly nostalgic aural outlet while this substance itself indubitably remains, fortifying and intensifying as it ferments with time. Never were there a more appropriate time to hit the Scotch and "run around in fields all day"...
