DON’T WORRY + LIGHTCLIFFE + WILD CAT STRIKE + MURDERHOUSE – HOPE & RUIN, BRIGHTON 11th DECEMBER 2017
With all the crowd surfing shenanigans of The Darkness going on down the hill at Brighton’s Dome, things were more sedate up at Queens Road’s Hope & Ruin. Tonight’s mainly student clientele dutifully parted with their £5 and in return they were treated to no less than four decent bands for their monies worth. That’s an amazing £1.25 per band thanks to Brighton based organisers Sugar Free Records.
Tonight’s event did make us feel as though we were members of an exclusive student’s club for up and coming ‘rad bands’ – it seemed as we were in the know! It felt like that just under two years ago, when on the exact same stage, we witnessed a budding Dua Lipa strutting her stuff and boy look at her now! Maybe in time, one or more of tonight’s fifteen young lads that graced the stage would also go onto bigger and better things? Only time will tell.
So up first tonight were Murderhouse, who are a Brighton 4-piece indie band made up of Conall, Jack, James and Murphy. We picked up on the Weezer Los Angeles vocal style from their singer, who told us that HMV had made him redundant. We discussed the bands energetic set tonight which partly consisted of tracks from their debut ‘Self Help’ EP from 2016 and their recent pink cassette ‘Self-Doubt’ EP and we concluded that hopefully when Murderhouse finally release an album, then hopefully it will shift enough units in order that HMV are forced to stock it – justice done! Find out what they sound like here: https://hangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/self-doubt
Second on the bill this evening is Brighton’s very own heavy hippy folk rock 4-piece Wild Cat Strike. These guys (Danny, Max, Joe and Chris) wouldn’t really sound out of place if it was 1970, although they have only been going 5 years. They executed a powerful set best likened to folk with aggression. They would go down well in a bar in Amsterdam. Again, the vocals had an American tinge to them. They performed their brand new ‘Horses’ single which you can hear here: https://smallpond.bandcamp.com/track/horses
Lightcliffe were up on stage next. This 4-piece London based outfit is made up of Alex, Benedict, Jimmy and Oscar and musically they sound rather similar to The Killers – niiiice! I particularly like their ‘Staring At Your Bedroom Floor’ song which appears on their newly released ‘For A While’ EP. Tonight they gave an outing for ‘Winter’ from the same EP, which is a rather lovely melodic piece, as is ‘Please Leave’ which they also expertly performed this evening. Fancy having a listen to their sound, then click here: https://soundcloud.com/fbdrecords
Headline act this evening is Don’t Worry, who are Ronan, Samuel and Jack with the assistance tonight from Alex from Lightcliffe on bass. Don’t Worry hail from Harlow new town in Essex and there’s elements of Blink 182, Nirvana and Oasis style rock’n’roll star.
They played several of their new songs as well as ‘Opener’, ‘Three Nil’ and ‘Pyric Salamander’ from their 2016 ‘Bane Of My Lifestyle’ EP. These chaps are rather fond of sudden endings and boy does the singer blurt out the lyrics. Enjoy their music here: https://dontworry.bandcamp.com/
The singer thanked the sound and light engineer Leroy for the decent sound quality during the evening and I too would also like to thank him for choosing to put on The Modern Lovers track ‘Hospital’, which also sounded great! I had the feeling that only Leroy and myself knew what the track was. Here it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJldvAPwpQ
