It says a lot for the quality of a band's material when they can omit a good many of their singles releases from a headline set without leaving the audience feeling that something was missing. However, that's exactly what I Concur manage to do tonight. Playing a relatively low-key local gig to road test some of the new material they've been working on since last year's debut album, 'Able Archer', only four of the nine songs on the set list have been released to date.
So this is the 'concur v2.0' they mentioned on their MySpace blog recently. The early signs are promising: very promising indeed. Launching straight in, all guitars firing, with new track 'Reds,' it's clear that these guys haven't mellowed during their time away, and if anything, are leaning toward a slightly harder-edged sound. That isn't to say they've ditched the melodies, with the two guitars chiming and interweaving magnificently beneath vocal harmonies and anthemic choruses (it's a term I dislike, mostly because it's been chronically overused and misapplied, but it's entirely appropriate to I Concur's material).
The lyrical content is still brilliantly unconventional, too. New song 'Spiders' is about a recurrent nightmare of being attacked by spiders and scorpions. Anther one of the new songs (from my scribbled notes it's unclear which - I was too engrossed in the performance to write much) is a stonking bass-driven affair, and has a real weight to it, and the old and new material sit nicely together. Rather than indicate sameness, though, it's testament to the confidence and efficacy with which they dispatch the new songs: they've clearly spent time on rehearsal, and honing the songs to tight, lean perfection.
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So, no 'Build Around Me' or 'Oblige,' and similarly, no 'Grandeur' (one of my personal favourites from the album), but the performance of 'Sobotka' is positively ferocious, while 'Lucky Jack' has a real solidity about it. The volume helps a lot, and highlights the way Tim Hann's cleaner lead guitar sound contrasts with the grit of Chris Woolford's heavily distorted texture-giving sound, and the two combine to produce a sound of real depth.
While currently ranking as one of the great yet underrated bands of the Leeds scene, on the evidence of tonight's set, there's plenty of scope for all of that to change. I Concur are an impressively proficient, and above all, exhilarating live act, with a real adeptness for producing quality songs that are both memorable and substantial. The next album should be a belter.
http://www.myspace.com/iconcurband
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