JOE & THE SH*TBOYS + LAMBRINI GIRLS + DAGOBAH SISTERS – THE HOPE & RUIN, BRIGHTON 27.9.21
Well I suppose that you have guessed my choice of musical entertainment for last night here in Brighton by the line above! Yes I opted for the latter of the two options!
Clearly I was in a minority last night, having driven part the hordes entering the Brighton Dome who were there to witness an energetic performance by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Yungblud, as part of his huge autumn 2021 ‘Life on Mars’ tour, following the release of his sophomore album ‘Weird!’
So you don’t feel hard done by, here are four decent photos taken by Lee Floyd at that Yungblud concert – enjoy!
I meanwhile headed up the hill and took up residency at The Hope & Ruin in Queens Road, which was obviously less packed than The Dome concert hall. Our promoter was Love Thy Neighbour who over the past few years has always managed to find interesting and exciting new acts for the Brighton punters and this event was no exception.
We purchased our drinks of choice at the bar and proceeded to head upstairs to the first floor concert room.
Whizzing up the stairs behind us was the first support band, the Dagobah Sisters. “Dagobah Sisters coming through” they exclaimed as they rushed onto the stage! They were three minutes late, and so at 8:23pm, the loud raw noise began sounding out, accompanied by rasping style vocals.
The Dagobah Sisters are actually a trio of guys, namely James Dando (guitar and vocals), Albert Dyba (bass and vox) and Will Amey (drums). It’s extremely unlikely that they hail from the fictional Dagobah planet and eponymous star system that appeared in the Star Wars films ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ and ‘Return Of The Jedi’, but what is certain is that they have taken up residency here in Brighton. This is borne witness by the fact that they have a few fans in attendance and so their American west coast grunge sound is rather well received by them.
The three bands on the bill this evening all had something in common…brevity! In the case of the Dagobah Sisters it was their epic track titled ‘Acid Attack’, which must have ran for at least five seconds! Yep, five seconds!
During their 25 minute eleven track set, they performed a track titled ‘Watto’ which was written in homage to the ‘male’ Star Wars character of the same name who was a Toydarian junk dealer/human trafficker and owned a shop in Mos Espa on Tatooine. They also played all four songs found on their 2020 ‘No Fate’ EP, namely ‘Sheep’, ‘No Fate’, ‘Boost’ and ‘Wicker Man’. They ceased fire at 8:48pm.
Dagobah Girls setlist:
‘Chemical Elephants’
‘Sheep’
‘Stranglers’
‘Wicker Man’
‘Sick’
‘What Are You?’
‘Acid Attack’
‘Watto’
‘No Fate’
‘Burns Victim’
‘Boost’
Find the Dagobah Sisters on Spotify.
After a pause in live music proceedings of 21 minutes, the next act took to the stage, but with a difference. At 9:09pm stood in front of us were Phoebe Lunny (vocals and ‘the image of a’ guitar), Fox O’Reilly aka Fox Foxington Fox (bass) and Catt Jack (drums…sometimes!). Yes folks, it’s the Lambrini Girls.
These days it seems that this Brighton based trio are omnipresent. They pop up with such regularity on many of the local bills and the reason for this is they are pure entertainment. For instance, this time around, rather than screeching loudly into the mic and blasting out one of their tunes, the trio were initially rather content to stand there whilst Phoebe held a mobile phone up to the mic so that everyone could hear it playing one of Craig David’s hit songs. This brought a smile to everyone’s faces.
They then did actually launch into their track called ‘Craig David’ after a minute or so and performed six other tracks for us. The Hope & Ruin concert room had been filling up since the Dagobah Sisters performance and it’s highly likely that several punters had arrived solely with the intention of witnessing ‘The Lambrini’s’ 23 minute chaotic live set.
They followed ‘Craig David’ up with ‘Sex Toy’ and Fox’s bass was really rumbling along very nicely here and if it was a synth, you could have likened it to the classic ‘Doctor Who’ theme. It was so prominent in the mix along with Catt’s drums. Hold on a minute, where’s Phoebe’s guitar? She’s clearly playing it, but we can’t hear it and it doesn’t appear to be a loose wire or not plugged in properly. This therefore leads me to the conclusion that ‘the fault’ more than likely is emanating from the other side of the room! Just saying!
