CosyCosy/Eleaven/Diamorphine/Mark Hammond
at the Portland Arms 29/1/04
By Holl(i)ly
I usually face opening acoustic acts with a certain amount of trepidation
at the prospect of spending the next several minutes being embarrassed
by someone's inability to realise that no one wants to hear in rhyming
detail about everyone they've ever broken up with, but Mark Hammond's
solo spot
came as a pleasant surprise. Strong vocals sung with genuine feeling and
power over a guitar line which, rather than just being the background
noise to sing the vocals over, was full of musical interest in itself
and rather louder and fuller-sounding than you expect one acoustic guitar
to be. And fantastically enough there was no noticeable mass audience
exit in the direction of the bar, which is a rare thing for any songwriter-type
to be
able to claim of his set.
Diamorphine seemed to have a grand time on stage playing their rhythmic,
bass heavy sound with a strong element of funk to it, loud and fast under
a tuneful holler of a vocal line with echoes of Frank Black in it. In
fact, a
large part of the set sounded like a more cohesive Pixies might, if they
lost the whoops and hollers and played for a powerful rather than quirky
sound. Occasionally a slower song would have echoes of the Chilli Peppers
in
it, which is a bad thing as far as I'm concerned since the mere suggestion
of a Chillis resemblance usually has me spitting fire and brimstone and
heading for the bar. But in this case Diamorphine layered their slower
numbers with enough weird, rippling guitar sounds and hissing distortion
effects to hold interest in the songs and salvage them from the Chillis
morbid funk-based drone, shaking down several ingredients to create their
own very appealing sound.
In what was only their third gig, Eleaven played several cracking pop
songs: summery, uplifting numbers with strong tunes and that glorious,
glowing sense of uplifting melancholy behind them which is just what you
need to
counteract freezing temperatures outside. When they branched off into
other genres, however, it didn't work so well - the poppier numbers had
an common emotional underpinning to them which gave the set a sense of
continuity, and when they strayed from that the sense of band trademark
didn't come with them and it made the set feel somewhat fractured and
stopped it working as a
whole. But the good moments were Good, and this being onlytheir third
gig I await developments with interest.
And finally Cosy Cosy, whose trademark vocal harmonies meant that their
acoustic appearance was still very much a Cosy experience. The stripped
down nature of their set meant their barbed and bitter-sweet lyrics were
more
audible than usual and made the edgy quality that always lurks beneath
their all-out full-on-fun façade come across more explicitly. The
vocal harmonies are easily strong enough to hold their set together, and
acoustically Cosy
Cosy work very well indeed. They should by rights have played to a fuller
room, but the audience is rare indeed that will walk through snow and
ice to
reach a gig. The wimps.
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