With a Jing Jang here and a Jang Jong there, barring the ever-illusive Joe Lean remnants of the inferred major-screwing, LP-scrapping troupe are scattered ubiquitously throughout a seething Shacklewell Arms. Tonight's bunch, adjudged on pure and simply superficial old attire, are out in force to witness TOY whip a four-legged Dalston-centric residency into knowingly lackadaisical, forcedly monochromic action. Conversely, those here congregated muster minimal enthusiasm in indulging in Ralegh Long's brand of lightly melodramatic, folk-lilted chanson: somewhere on the side of the long, lonesome, and meandering road between scrapbook emperor Jeffrey Lewis and perennial prog titans The Tangent, his is a set laced with understated impressionism, interwoven with strands of the lyrically engrossing and it's as dear as it is intermittently dour.
Cometh the hour (9.20pm); cometh the women (and man) of
Novella. As drums are tinkered and guitars tuned, the front few rows are suddenly overwhelmed by male omnipresence, cameras protruding from many a chest as testosterone levels within the room hit palpable, somewhat perturbing zeniths. As attractive as they may be and as bewitching as Hollie Warren's iced vocal susurrations are it's their restless gambolling from one genre (and with that, aesthetically, era) to another, underpinned by the grittiest and greatest elements of grunge, that's most winsome: opener She Searches is sustained by a veritably baggy bottom end courtesy of illustrator-cum-bassist-cum-guitarist Sophy Hollington that props up visceral shards of heavily phased, distortion-doused Gibson chomp while Strange Times sounds like Courtney Love fronting Superchunk as it quivers through ravaged PA that'd question what it did to deserve such punitive salvo. Were it personified, and imbued with a sense of definite being... Then before you're afforded a gasp of respite they're sounding akin to a modern-day Popguns were Wendy Morgan et al. holed up in the grimiest endz of Shacklewell. If you're still struggling to gauge the strength of this particular set, that they neglect the latest, and indeed thus far greatest globule to descend from
the Soundcloud (
the sensational Santiago) suggests a burgeoning audacity, a resolute belief in their own ability that belies their status as an emerging act just commencing the doing of the Dalston rounds.
The show hinges however on the joyful frivolity and engaging naïveté of a 'new band': Warren's lyrics are, in this setting, incomprehensible and largely inaudible, buried somewhere within a wondrous (if perhaps unintentionally) Dinosaur Jr.-ish melange of a mix; false starts and miscommunications arise periodically, primarily between the band and their latest drumming recruit; and their song order is dictated by scribbles of scarcely decipherable setlist. Moreover they exhibit an endearingly unequivocal and undisguisable, Dando-esque apprehension towards the live show, cowering behind drawn curtains of meticulously kempt hair as they clunk through "new one" He's My Morning, a pulsating hunk of overdrive scented with essence of Lemonheads. Dirty blues lickety-splits forcefully into Sonic Youth on sixth of six You're Not That Cool and following a murmur or two's thanks they recede from spotlit view. Something's starting to happen, and said something feels as ferociously invigorating as we pasty, anaemic Brits will come to
the ferocious invigoration of Wild Flag for the foreseeable.
