The Sunshine Underground @ The Vine
By Lauren Strain
Walker's instruments are powerful: drums are hit, guitars are thwacked, bass is appropriately loud; 'tis a shame that the vocals can't cope/don't try. Endearingly, the bassist spends his time with the back to the bar - one song is led by this either shy or just plain difficult man, rather than the guitarist, and there's something quite intriguingly enchanting about hearing a voice but not being able to see a face - you end up listening far more carefully. Anyhow, enough philosophising over a Malibu...
Sheffield's The New Black's monochrome, edgy atmosphere slices through The Vine's escalating blabber after a grapple with electrical problems, shutting everyone up immediately. Monotone, insistently dark and masculine tones churn forth from the swaggering, piercing-eyed frontman, who fixes his Arctic glare on something and proceeds to turn it to steel. I was quite scared at one point. His foreboding presence is backed by the measured, understated, graphite cool of the Interpol-like guitars and basement, primal drums. This is deep, throaty, BLACK stuff gradually swelling into impressive walls of white-hot screams - top frets are reached, shivers are felt, and they successfully combine a nicotine-stained grime with a pristine, clinical gloss. Musically, they have a sophisticated, cut-glass unit, but visually they're a little skewiff - the singer with his individualistic, cold, Morrrissey-esque focus seems ever so slightly out of place amongst his arty-haired, be-blazered and be-badged counterparts. Somehow, the jigsaw doesn't quite piece together, but they're so close that it's really rather exciting.
I put 100% conviction and trust in the hope that The Sunshine Underground will follow in the successful footsteps of such cream of the Leeds crop as Kaiser Chiefs, 10,000 Things and co. It's performances like these that make you realise just how average the watery, diluted, sloshy pap we are duped into liking by the sterile mainstream 'rock' world of Converse and asymmetrical hairstyles really is.
The Sunshine Underground put many of the most famous or 'ooh, how very now' bands in the world I've seen to shame of gigantic proportions. Craig's voice is a pure distillation of the core of the soul - a lusty, sharp yelp of love, hate, joy and anger. Basically, it's awesome. Indeed, he also knows how to give a cowbell a good time.
The stage is dominated by a band so tight, so together, and so tied up in their own confidence that if the speakers could express feelings, then they would probably scream out 'Thankyouuuuuuu!!!', so privileged are they in their pleasurable job of amplifying something this damn good. Each band member plays as if their next intake of beer/oxygen depends on the force with which they beat their instruments. Each crowd member smiles knowingly with the exciting idea that, for £4, we've been able to liberally tap our right feet, grin from ear to ear, sing emphatically and bang our heads about a bit whilst watching a band with more energy than all the lethargic rubbish cluttering up the pages of a certain weekly publication put together would ever have, even if they were force-fed a U-boat of amphetamines. The Sunshine Underground don't need any hype, justification or validation in the press, I'm sure - the word-of-mouth from their gigs alone will turn them into something of a local phenomenon and, hopefully, more.
The next morning, I wake up in a haze of stale smoke, humming 'Commercial Breakdown', and eating some pancakes for breakfast. Couldn't get better, really, could it, this music malarkey? Three cheers for the existence of The Vine, for Transmission, for The Fucking Great Sunshine Underground, as they have now been officially renamed, and for the district of Leeds in general. Whoopaa!
