TELLISON, MUNCIE GIRLS, THE WAH WAH CLUB.
Lev 2 Esquires Bedford. Saturday 2nd April 2016.
For this particular Saturday night, The Pad Presents brought to us the Esquires debut of TELLISON, A quartet who purvey some quintessentially indie pop rock. Formed way back in 2000, they have just released only their third studio album, which is entitled Hopes Fading Nightly, Tellison continue to remain a solid and dependable cult band who perhaps will be better valued either when they have split up, or in some thirty years time. Frontman Stephen Davison is warm and cheerful upon his opening to us. “Nice to meet you all,” he adds further “We come from down the road.” A voice in the crowd quizzically asks “Where?” “London” is the reply. Helix And Ferman opens the set but I feel the audience really comes to life with the very next offering when Tellison announce that “This is a song about Edith Wharton.” Loud shouts of approval ring around the room. One impressive asset that this band possess is the ability to utilise the lovely use of vocals and harmonies. It seems like every song is crafted to demonstrate this and also gives the crowd a welcome chance to singalong. Tellison seem to occupy that fertile ground, say somewhere between Futureheads and Lemonheads. Taken from their 2007 debut album Contact! Contact! They perform for us New York, New York, New York. This one undoubtedly brings back a lot of good memories for those in attendance. It is a small but enthusiastic audience who are bunched up right at the front and obviously enjoying themselves, these are the keen and knowledgeable fans from their aforementioned new album Wrecker is gloriously upbeat and catchy. While listening to vast chunks of this set and enjoying my first viewing of Tellison I do ponder the thought, that I am not entirely convinced I will wake up in the morning with their songs lodged in my head. It does appear that there are a lot of people who have travelled many miles to be here. This comes to mind when there is a Tellison Heartfordshire shout out of “Ten points for Baldock,” however, I couldn’t agree with the guy in the front row, who rather unfairly shouted out a request to the band to “Don’t come here again!” Many songs are culled from their second album, Time Wages Of Fear, of those, the most bizarre one is a composition called Freud Links The Teeth And The Heart. Tellison introduce it very surreally by announcing that this is a song about falling in love with your dentist! It comes with some creepy and at times disturbing lyrics, such as “Please take care of your teeth, please take care of my heart.” Tellison finish off their set in grand style with Get On. This anthemic finale was lapped up gloriously by an audience who all joined in with the chorus. With fourteen songs performed, the four musicians said their goodbyes. Value for money was a phrase that spring to my mind when they departed.
Main support to Tellison tonight were MUNCIE GIRLS. (Only one is!) This pop punk trio from Exeter are currently being hugely championed by Kerrang Magazine and on my first sighting of them, it’s easy to see why. Their totally charismatic female vocalist has a real bubbly personality, as she recalls “Playing in Manchester last night” and then dancing energetically to “Danzig” her vocals are akin to a folk singer, it also reminds some of Julianna Hatfield. Bouncy guitar and drum work coarses through songs such as Gone With The Wind, Railroad and Feel It Soon. My favourite one came at the tail end of the Muncie Girls set and it was called Gas Mark 4. This is a band I will keep an eye out for. Perhaps they will make it big and do all the festivals, or they might just disappear into oblivion. I seriously hope they succeed.
Opening the show were THE WAH WAH CLUB. This is a band difficult to describe or fully pigeonhole. Its indie rock, but of the much heavier variety and as ever contains a lot of musical depth and influences. Frontman Dan exudes a confident demeanour, leading a band who show no visible signs of pretentiousness. They fully delight in playing some experimental noise. The Wah Wah Club unravel a bundle of songs while exhibiting some good old Nirvanaish basslines and some Sabbathesque leanings. Lullabies starts slowly. Before it soon musically catches fire!
With a storming trademark riff, once again ‘The pride of Bucks impressed me immensely.
Review by Martin Stapleton. www.bedfordalternativemusic.co.uk