Bedford Alternative Music Present: GIRLPOWER SHOWCASE: Cats With Waterguns, Vendetta, The Free, Adiescar.

Holy Molys Lev 1 Esquires Bedford. Friday 1st November 2013.

This is a second consecutive night of live music presented by Bedford Alternative Music, principally to celebrate Halloween. I gather that last night's gig was highly successful with most attendees donning the obligatory costumes and blood splatters. Imagination was running amok! A similar vein runs through tonight's show which is themed as a Girl Power showcase. Everyone still seems to be in a spooky mood with fancy dress of all kinds being worn.

Opening our show is ADIESCAR. As the frontwoman of local rockers Near Moments, tonight sees the gentle and acoustic side to her flexible personality. Once again she is helped out by band mates Joel and Tom who provide percussion and guitar respectively. This is an excellent start to my evening. Yet again Adeiscar is spellbindingly brilliant. Her songwriting is much to be admired, especially considering her tender years. They incorporate so many inspirations. Take "Warm bodies" for example. This appropriately brings to her mind "film zombies and vampires". She is ice cool under pressure. Her skilled technicality is demonstrated when she informs us why there may be a pregnant pause after each composition. She tells us "as you know, with so many musicians here, every song is different, every song has to be retuned". We appreciate this comment, especially when you listen and absorb the haunting and divine "Dancing in the rain". "Daydreamer" is also worthy of note in Adiescar's delightful set.

A showcase night is a chance for all inexperienced bands and musicians to dip a little toe in an expansive musical pool. This is very much the opportunity that BAM gave female acoustic duo THE FREE tonight. Looking extremely nervous at the start, they gave it their best shot and by the close, probably didn't want to leave the Holy Moly's stage. The crowd gave good and eager encouragement as a host of covers were given a slightly different slant. These included "Heart shaped box" and the ever over-used "Wonderwall".

Things were cranked up somewhat when Royston's VENDETTA returned to Esquires. The last time I saw this female fronted quartet was at June's Distortion Festival where I felt that amongst such an array of good heavy bands they were slightly out of their depth, or at least below par. Their enthusiasm is to be admired, but the young lady is a little worried by her rather over zealous male colleagues as she firmly tells them "Don't play too fast, it will kill me"! "Crocodile tears" seems to get the best reaction while, once again, a cover of SOAD's "Chop suey" induces more giggles than praise.

While Seven For A Secret cancelled and Cats With Waterguns lost their female element, service was rectified when we had the amusing sight of boys dressing up as girls. Let me explain further. CATS WITH WATERGUNS featured vocalist Joe (Hazard and Kokopellies) dressing up as a lady along with a guitarist. Just think of popular comedy programme Little Britain and you might get an idea of what they looked like. This reviewer muses that they really should have done a cover of the late seventies song by The Monks entitled "Nice legs shame about the face"! Now that would have smacked of irony. This set is all about fun and the music has a ska flavour. The crowd certainly seem to enjoy the novelty of it all. One thing I did notice was that Joe seemed so hyper throughout. Perhaps that is the influence of girl power!