The Royal Park Cellars in Leeds has got to be one of the best small venues you'll find. Bang in the middle of multi-ethnic, student-rich Leeds 6 it has a determined promoter in Steve Kind and a cheerfully dedicated crew who care a lot about sound and presentation. Even so, the big walk down the famous stairs has an extra buzz to it tonight.
VIB GYOR have been stirring breathless reactions for a year now (this reviewer's blathering about their early demo included) and I still haven’t seen the live set. Two other favourites are also on the bill (the Cellars is that kind of venue). It's feeling special.
So maybe you can sit with me through the puzzlement of seeing that bloke I'm sure I met on the caravanning holiday in Somerset (or was it Devon?) in 1994. He straps on an acoustic guitar and strides up to the mike. He sure doesn't look like a rock n roll starlet. But yeh, David Fendick it is. Six foot eight or nine and enough lean beef in his polo shirt to roll the England Rugby Union pack uphill. And with him, three sharp lookin' skinny geezers and one ex hippy with a Richard Thompson beard. CD:UK would not be lovin' this at all. No sir.
It's fine by me, because the only thing that seems to matter with these young dudes is the music. They can play a bit. Bloody Nora, they can play a lot. Fendick's voice is a national monument in its own right. Zane Keenan chucks around guitar and keyboard as if he knew what he was doing and the Three Geezer's sound like they're on day release from Satan's Own Band. Woo Hoo, as I think we say these days.
The set is one sealed unit of monstrous smart-rock anthems. Fendick's searing, delicate, powerhouse tenor rings out and the band swirl, dive and howl together like an asteroid belt of chunks from Buckley's band, with dangerous splinters from Explosions in the Sky, Appleseed Cast, Dark Star, Greenwood, or even Steinman. One song blends into another and even the newest ("Church Bell" just being offered up for a first live exposition tonight) swing the complexities around like kid's toys in some tantrum of demonic precision.
Even here at the start of a career Vib Gyor know about things like pacing and sequencing a set. You can feel the effortless power of a crescendo that builds through six songs, culminating in "Long way Down" with its grandiose piano and full band onslaught kicking up into newer song "The Stalker" which tears it up in audience-bludgeoning style ready for the two song play-out and encore section. We had eight songs, working a full set that built from the dizzying heights of opener "Permanent Disguise" right into the stratosphere of the last two tunes – the dancing "You wear Me Out" and their already well-established "Insomnia". Jaw dropper of the night for me was "Long way Down", leading in with Zane's accomplished piano playing and moving through a powerful tune into a precision onslaught of guitars (Zane with Jonny Mulroy) and intergalactic bass and drumming (James "The Cat" Heggie and Jonny Hooker respectively). A band that puts all it’s songs on-line for free download is either mad or very confident of their ability to knock out another 20 whenever they're needed. They don’t look mad. But they might just fall foul of the too-much-ability police at Kings Reach Towers … see www.vib-gyor.com
NIKOLI had played the earlier set, and offered the decent thing – a different take and a different set of talents. The secret joy of the band is the two, three and four part harmony singing that starts with a barely-noticed, joyous second vocal from behind the drum kit. I always love it when the drummer sings. From Levon Helm to Georgia Hubley, you can’t beat it for outsider melancholy. Songs like the sparkling opener "Always" are Nikoli stock-in-trade. Quality tunes and powerful deliveries suggest a genuinely English take on power pop that pumps up the thrills but leaves out the cheese. Intelligent is a word that comes to mind, in a definitely non-argumentative kind of way. And jeez, three of the band wear specs. I'm tempted to trade in my contact lenses and get back to my Buddy Holly authenticity. Cool.
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Special mention must be addressed to the pleasure of being able to hear all the words (plaudits to the sound guy), and having words that are worth hearing (all hail the band). Tim Hann is the edgy front man – wired intensity and brimming with poptastic instincts that (being English) he's mercifully shy of overplaying. Spencer Bayles is utterly mournful-looking on bass, but the instrument sings like a bird and that crucial bottom note in the harmony springs the melodies along. James Brunger is the mystery singing drummer – one of the very best. And Chris Maunder looks and plays the part as resident musician on piano (when he isn’t playing something else of singing) with I guess anything else you asked him to get a tune out of.
The irresistible highlight for me is current single "Take It And Go" with one of those wistful tunes that sits in the piano part and haunts the song like a wraith. In the live setting the wonder is the volume and intensity of what Nikoli do. Half way through the set I found myself thinking "this is what Doves thought they sounded like". Titles like "Never Know", "Locked Out" and "Sandstone" are a good guide to the deft economy of the whole thing. Nikoli are a self contained and very listenable act – the sort of band you'll want a whole album of. Go see www.nikoli.co.uk.
Tonight's openers were iLiKETRAiNS, friends of Stephenson and his Rocket, enemy of typographers world-wide. Purveyors of the epic and the glorious. Like Nikoli they have a huge talent for singable melody. The songs have a more socio-industrial sweep to them – rail disasters and the wretchedness of being and so on. "Oh the Humanity" is an obvious top ten hit – scalable technology, coherent ethical framework, a dash of the dismals and a chorus you can shout your head off to.
Their endearingly "train set might not work first time" approach, with home movie projectors, a cornet playing ticket collector and wobbly screen is getting increasingly upstaged by the sheer power of their orchestrally-inclined music. The nifty British Rail costumes are way better than British Sea Power's mish mash of twigs and tin hats … but I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t start to transform or even disappear as the band build up a head of steam through the songs. Nostalgic, tuneful and tough minded at the same time. The confidence and the smiles are getting bigger, and the audience love 'em.
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