THE BUG CLUB + THE MOCK TUDORS + THE DREAM MACHINE – SCALA, KING’S CROSS, LONDON 26.10.22
The Bug Club are on tour this autumn promoting their debut album ‘Green Dream In F#’. I’ve seen them a few times now and have been mightily impressed. They opened up their 20-date UK tour here in Brighton at the Komedia last night, but as I already had a ticket to see Pavement at the Roundhouse instead,(Review HERE) so I hit on the plan of seeing them on date two of the tour at the Scala in King’s Cross. Support tonight comes from The Dream Machine and The Mock Tudors.
The Dream Machine are a four-piece from the Wirral Peninsula, Liverpool, who were also in Brighton last month as support to The Lathums at Chalk on 27th September. They’re very 1960s influenced, and are very much cosmic scousers. They’re like a punchier Coral. They’re impossibly young, and their playing is very cohesive. The lead guitarist produces some very impressive wah-wah drenched lead, but it just isn’t loud enough, and is in danger of being lost in the mix. Now isn’t the time to be shy sunshine! They play their new single, but don’t tell us what it’s called. Turns out it’s ‘TV Baby / Satan’s Child’ and it’s very fast, and is followed by what appears to be a snippet of The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Their material really stands out, and I would say that they’re definitely worth a listen.
The Mock Tudors are mostly fast and punky. They dress identically in Adidas jackets and shorts, and sport the kind of thick white rimmed oval shades favoured by Kurt Cobain thirty years ago. Additionally they have cut down the bodies of their (hopefully copy) Fender guitar and bass so they have a crude teardrop shape. Their songs’ subject matter seem pretty quirky. They have a song about a guy who’s always the first in the street to put his bins out. ‘What Goes On Behind The Curtains’ is about an orgy at a primary school parents’ book club. Meanwhile ‘All The Way From The Future’ is seemingly about crypto currency. Towards the end of the set the guitarist and bassist swap instruments, which is no mean feat bearing in mind that one of them plays left-handed. Yet, there’s something of the whiff of the novelty act about this band. They clearly have a great sense of humour, but following a band as good as The Dream Machine, they don’t really come off that well. Not bad, but only just on the right side of okay.
Next up we have The Bug Club playing their biggest headline show to date. I had a chat with drummer Dan Matthew prior to the gig, and told him that I would be basing my review around the premise “if The Beatles came from Caldicot” (where The Bug Club hail from), so no pressure then. They bravely commence with ‘Little Coy Space Boy’ from the new album, but this is rapidly followed by favourite ‘My Baby Loves Rock ‘n’ Roll Music’.
As you might expect from a London headline date promoting a new album, there are a lot of new songs being played tonight. I ordered my copy of the album some weeks ago, and I still haven’t received it so this material is all new to me. It’s immediately obvious that the new songs are noticeably more mature. There are more slow songs too, which makes the set rather interesting. Also, the new songs are liberally peppered throughout the set, so there aren’t huge chunks where the audience don’t know the songs. There’s always a degree of humour (as opposed to comedy) in The Bug Club’s set. Tonight, during ‘Christmas Lullaby’ we all have to pretend it’s Christmas. Most people comply. At least to a degree.
Tilly Harris plays a brief bass solo during ‘If My Mother Thinks I’m Happy’, which I don’t remember her doing before. Maybe I haven’t been paying sufficient attention! One thing that’s noticeable is that The Bug Club seem to be increasingly stretching out their songs. And this is with a set that’s twenty-three songs long!!! During their rockier moments they remind me of ‘The Who Live At Leeds’. That’s a compliment incidentally. The band’s musicianship is simply awesome. At one point Tilly nonchalantly plays slide on her bass for example, whilst Sam Willmett’s guitar playing never ceases to impress.
They finish with ‘A Love Song’, and I must confess that I really don’t expect an encore, but back they come for ‘We Don’t Need Room For Lovin’’, their first single. With a fine debut album together with a compilation of their two EPs under their belt, not to mention a breathtakingly good live act, The Bug Club have every reason to be optimistic. They’re on tour for most of November. Go see ‘em!
The Bug Club setlist:
‘Little Coy Space Boy’
‘My Baby Loves Rock & Roll Music’
‘Vegetable Garden’
‘The Fixer’
‘Only In Love’
‘Six O’Clock News’
‘Love For Two’
‘My Guy’
‘Yesterday’s Paper’
‘Sitting On The Rings Of Saturn’
‘Launching Moondream One’
‘Checkmate’
‘Christmas Lullaby’
‘Love Letters From Jupiter’
‘If My Mother Thinks I’m Happy’
‘Intelectuals’
‘Pick Me (Like A Flower)’
‘It’s Art’
‘Going Down’
‘Love Is A Painting’
‘Some Things Sound Better In Space’
‘Green Dream In F#’
‘A Love Song’
(encore)
‘We Don’t Need Room for Lovin’’
‘Hammerman’
