13/01/07 – The Klatter, Fur, The Shivers

Flapper & Firkin, Birmingham

We kicked off with The Shivers, a Cambridge four-piece who were, in true Cambridge fashion, apologetic about their provenance.

Something that struck me was (bizarrely) how much parts of their songs reminded me of Spongebob Squarepants… which can surely only be a good thing. Their whole sound is a country folky ragtime exposition on the beast with two backs… and was actually rather superb. I was convinced that at any moment I’d blink, and when I opened my eyes again there’d be sawdust on the floor and a pig squealing its way across the stage, darted after by someone called Clancy. Or something. Yeeeeehawwwww! The lead singer is quite an entertainer… growling and yodelling his way through tracks like “Shot to Shit” (actually a rather positive ditty for his girlfriend), “I Got a Bad Case of You” and “155cm of love”. The whole band comes together in a melee of suits, sideburns, and sunshiney blues. In fact, further to the last point of the tricolon, they sound to me like an amazing festival band – virgin ears can’t help but be swayed by the sheer force of talent and personality being weighed at them. I predict big things for them over the summer if they get the right stages at the right times. I can’t help but feel annoyed that the absence of bands like this is exactly WHY I left Cambridge in favour of Birmingham. But… now they come to me.

And then there was Fur, with more guitar pedals than you could shake a stick at. Seriously, they have more than Infadels. And these are youngsters, where do they get the cash from? Anyway… Fur have an Interpol sound about them, mixed with a bit of the Bravery (less so than on their Myspace, the recordings there are pretty shoddy so don’t get too worried), but necessarily less accomplished. That’s the main complaint I’d have about them – and it’s not really a complaint, more of an observation. they’re very green, and fairly messy. They’re still at the stage of youthful playing where the drummer doesn’t quite have the rhythm absolutely settled, and so the guitarists can’t follow him, make their own beat, then have to adjust back to fit the drums so the bass isn’t out of sync. But they show a lot of promise… I thought ‘Red’ was the track they were most comfortable with, bombing their way through it, much, much tighter than on the other tracks, and frankly being really rather good at it. I reckon they’ll either go on to huge things, developing their sound and improving fluency, or they’ll split up part way through the year, leaving their component parts to make new exciting bands. On the promotion side, they have a perfect poster boy in Luke, the lead… described by my male, not-gay companion as ‘completely adorable’. So imagine what the girlies’ll be like. Very promising.

Finally, the Klatter… (must have missed Bromford Green… was only a bit late… darn). Basket. They seem like a Super Furry Animals informed by the Arctic Monkeys generation… there’s some of that urgency and fury that I like so much, but the only problem is I’m not sure they deserve it. It’s weird – I mean they’ve got the attitude to deal with minor heckling, e.g. “Why’s your guitar out of tune?” “Cos I play like a bastard”. And they’ve got the skillz, they were very tight as an outfit and have the songs down pat. But they’re not very friendly to the virgin ear… I thought at the time that if I’d been wanting to hear them for ages, I would NOT have been disappointed, it would have been fucking ace. But they don’t make the effort, the tracks themselves don’t make the effort to bring new ears in. It’s a bit ‘you listen to us, you get to like us, then and only then will we entertain you.’ They were very good, you couldn’t fault the performance (apart from suggesting that the lead wears shorter sleeves next time, looked like they were annoying him), and I thought the visual effect of having a left-hooker on stage was pretty coo, broke things up a bit. I think if they get playlisted on a major music station, they’ll probably make it huge, but otherwise they may find it hard winning people over on their own terms.

The Klatter, Fur, The Shivers