Christopher Nosnibor
Is it possible for there to be too much happening? This evening’s show was brought forward to a matinee start with 8pm finish in order to accommodate England’s World Cup quarter final match with its 10mp kick off. And while another tasty lineup headlined by Soma Crew on the other side of town got rescheduled, there’s also Super Furry Animals headlining one of the city’s biggest nights of the year at The Museum Gardens, and York Races. These are the challenges which can face promoters – and given other issues, like the first band on the original bill having to pull out because of being unable to make the earlier time slot, and Steatopygous having van issues that resulted in their having to cancel their Glasgow show the night before and having to be rescued from limbo in Leeds, it’s little short of a miracle that tonight even went ahead, let alone that people turned up.
It’s oft said that most music reviewers are failed musicians – usually by the kind of cynics who trot out lines like ‘if you can’t do, teach’, while themselves being incredibly self-satisfied by their having never attempted anything to fail at. And so it is that I find myself here as a last-minute replacement for The Pennydrops, who had to cancel, and while it’s true that the early doors meant the vast majority turned up after my set, I’d call getting to blast my racket without clearing the room a success.
Chaffinch may visually resemble York band Knitting Circle with an additional guitarist, but they’re very, very different indeed. And here, playing their fifth ever show, they cement the differences, not just sonically, but in terms of presentation, with all but the drummer playing the majority of the set in front of the stage, largely with their backs to the audience, with the jabbing twin guitars playing against and across one another to forge jolting No-Wave discord atop shuddering bass and powerful syncopated drumming. Their set is rapidly evolving, too, with a couple of new songs packed into their succinct and thrilling set.
Chaffinch
It’s here that I should once again highlight the eclecticism of Utterly Fuzzled lineups. As much as they do perhaps have a leaning towards indie, alternative rock, contemporary punk and post-punk, as Jo Dale explained to me in a recent interview, their fundamental criteria are ‘Absolutely no all-male line-ups! …We’re not genre specific, between us we have very wide musical tastes. Basically, if it excites us then we want to put it on, simple as that really’.
Even so, having seen Wiltshire four-piece Steatopygous (whose name, incidentally, means fat or prominent buttocks) advertised as ‘teenagers playing high-energy punk with a rather 90s riot grrrl feel’ and trading in ‘raging expressions of angered feminist teenage anguish did nothing to prepare me for the full-on aural assault that incorporates elements of hardcore and metalcore. With heavy, filthy bass dominating the dense sound, I’m at times reminded of the dirty noise rock of Fudge Tunnel, only rendered all the more terrifying by Poppy’s throat-rippingly demonic vocals. A high, crisp snare cuts through the sludge noise. But there’s subtlety and detail to their sonic palate, too. Mellow passages border on folk, with spoken word segments, showcasing some intelligent and articulate songwriting that’s so much more than mere rage. That said, the final song, ‘Death to Farage’ is a beast and whips up a mini-moshpit down the front, and that’s no small feat when it’s absolutely melting.
Steatopygous
So after extreme electronica, angular no-wave noise rock, and multi-faceted hardcore, Cowtown are perhaps the most overtly indie / alternative act of the night, but the thing about Cowtown is that, well, they’re uniquely Cowtown. Stalwarts of the Leeds scene in the same way as Bilge Pump (and, more recently, Objections, and Thank, for that matter), it’s the quirkiness that’s as integral to their appeal as their commitment to the DIY scene. Oh, and songs, of course. They have some songs. Good songs, too. But what are they about? Tonight, we get to find out about some of them. And so do they, seemingly for the first time, too. This is a significant part of the great and enduring appeal of Cowtown: they never fail to entertain, and as they race through the songs – grunge and punk at heart, but with pop keen leanings –with unbridled energy and effervescence, there’s a joy which radiates from the stage: they genuinely love doing what they do – and tonight, Hilary is loving the gong, a fixture of Utterly Fuzzled events used primarily to herald the commencement of each set, but here, used as punctuation between songs, and equally, just for the fun of it. And ultimately, fun is what they specialise in, bringing a near-miraculous evening to a most uplifting finish.
Cowtown
Aural Aggravation 