Original bands, original music from Lincoln & Beyond

Gran Ronde + Dark Mantra + Annie Collett

Friday, 12 March 2010

Bivouac @ The Miller's Arms

16th May 2009

Photos & Review by Pete

I wonder if local promoter Steve ‘The Biv’ Hawkins can keep putting on gigs indefinitely, week in week out when only a handful of people are showing up to pay out a fiver to see bands.  Who’d be a promoter, eh?

I was here for the headliners but still I was singing ‘So Sweet’ to myself over and over one evening last week, 19 year old Annie Collett’s superb example of song writing skill.  I was looking forward to hearing her perform it having first heard her play it here a few weeks back.  She opened with another quality number, singing the line ‘Lies, lies, lies/Taking us down”, with some heavy electric piano playing propping up the mournful, heavy lyric.  Apart from a Collisions and Consequences cover - where the tune sounded like an ice cream van coming up the road - the main sensibility is suggestive of glacial loneliness, someone cut up with disappointments and resentment.  The trepidation in her performance at times suggests it is a challenge to present this material, as too is the fumbling for notebooks and searching for the correct pitch for new songs written in the last few days.  She’s vaguely apologetic but has no need to be.  Her set then seemed to finish abruptly, missing off the song I’d come early to catch.  Ah. Fingers crossed she doesn’t crumble and disappear, a thought-provoking performer lost from the local scene.

That high level of musicianship was maintained and even surpassed by prog trio Dark Mantra. While their 70’s rocking-out was at times maybe just too retro for its own good there were nevertheless plenty that was sublime and thrilling. The vocal was fairly inconsequential but did at least have the effect of offering another level of engagement so was worthwhile. There was needless resorting to effects at times and perhaps a little bit of showing-off when there was no need.  No need cos the lead guitar work was so clearly magnificent, so gifted; where even the simple bending of a string high on the neck was a glimpse of perfection. This was assured, full of feeling, deeply articulate. Being technically impressive expressive is a major achievement - and the ultimate acknowledgement has to center on the capacity for exploring wrongness, how there is a good kind of bad sound.  That kind of understanding and effort belongs in some higher zone of thoughtfulness. The bass playing was elegant and tidy - making good use of a plectrum - and was backed up by a full-on, busy drummer who had lightning shining in his eyes as the band cascaded to the climax of their set. 

Californian outfit Gran Ronde were looking fairly ragged from their arduous UK tour schedule that has them playing Manchester, Brighton, Cardiff, London, Liverpool and Glasgow - and Lincoln - all in the space of just over a week. After having had a career best reception in Brighton the previous night how must they have felt pulling up in a typically British downpour at the Millers Arms and now about to play to next to nobody?  It’s perhaps best not to think about too much.  Where even a cursory check of their Myspace tracks reveals this band are seriously interesting.  I’d say future Glastonbury Main Stage contenders - let alone local Engine Shed warehouse material.  And here’s the argument behind that.  Like the weather there’s something quintessentially British about their glorious Myspace tracks.  Something The Killers, working with producer Jeff Saltzman pulled off with ‘Hot Fuss’ in 2004 - when they produced a slice of viciously urgent Brit post-punk that was far more authentic and compelling in fact than any of the current British bands around!  Unfortunately they turned their back on that with subsequent albums that are largely sentimental, dirgeful midwest post-hippy shit.  All fluffy pink poodle. 

So The Killers made it and opted for a penthouse lifestyle of self-absorption and maudlin over-synthesised nihilism - but tonight it’s abundantly clear from the first blinding intro that the territory so quickly vacated has been completely overrun by another US band beating us at our own game, again.  Fuckin’ hell.  Fuckin’ marvellous. Theirs is a voice from the dark edges of cities, it juggles with social disenfranchisement as much as with - and through - personal anxieties.  It’s empowering and despairing and beautiful.  Even bands full of thieves and druggies from sink estates fail at this - they  are invariably too easily satisfied with endlessly paying substandard tributes to the Gallaghers who’d surely turn away in embarrassment.  Songs full of infantile posturing can’t disguise the failure of ambition which forever limits them however much the grim determination involved in the attempt to make it.  It’s a shame.

And so, with the song ‘Wisdom’ it’s not only the humiliation-inflected, inspired vocal but the jeering, sneering guitar that is so deeply evocative of brutal rainy Britain, of spilt drinks and split lips, jangling social phobia, burnt longings and brightly lit disappointment - which is so mesmerising.  Gran Ronde are showing us what might have been.  An out and out must-see band.

More pics at www.shinephoto.plus.com website.

Band Websites:

Gran Ronde
The Dark Mantra
Annie Collett

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