Shatner @ HiFi Club
By Lauren Strain
For some reason tonight I was tired; very tired, even though I'd done nothing all day except sit down on one chair or another. We saw quite a hefty number of bands, too, and these two factors do not bode well for my failing 2am memory. However, I shall try my sterling best to bring you some blurry, smudged recollections of what turned out to be a rather splendid, if progressively more expensive (£13.90 on a taxi! Scandal!), evening.
First things first. The Young Professionals were tuneful, bouncy upstarts with springing, malleable melodies, bitesize hunks of tempting chords and big shiny red cherries for choruses. The band's line-up (tea time) shuffled (forgive me) around the stage, interchanging instruments between every song. Whether this was a display of some sort of chronic indecisiveness or whether they were just going in for equal opportunities we're not sure, but it made for endearing, slightly dizzy, watching and even better listening.
Fat Charlie didn't provide the most inspiring experience I've ever been party to but they had a valiant bash at some funky chunks of basslines and the odd tinkering with world-y sounding blips and percussion. The Smokestacks threw themselves and their follicles about to something a little heavier on the ears, although I'm afraid we were far too distracted by how at least three of them managed to look uncannily like the Messiah (especially the guitarist, whom my friend Catie says displayed an exceptional aura of serenity which could only be possessed by Jesus himself) to notice their axe-wielding music too much. As a contrast, then, Western Suburbs spread warm, sleepy vibes of calm and cotton wool over the venue, occasionally ascending to promising, cloudy heights with sky-touching, smoky guitars but then, just as you started to smile in expectation, sliding miserably down into repetitive drudgery and over-simplified hooks. That's a bit harsh, though, considering they lacked their steel-guitarist; always an essential component in garnering appreciation from the girl who thinks she should have been born in a barn somewhere near Nashville, when Nashville was good. The band were pacified and sweetly peaceful yet at times so soporific we considered increasing the oxygen levels to reduce the amount of covert yawning going on ashamedly in the crowd.
Finally, to crown a pleasant if unremarkable line-up, we had Shatner following the compere skills of Rob Paul Chapman who sported a rather acceptable T-shirt. 'I Have Seen The Future' beheld wonderfully strong harmonies with teasingly offbeat rhythms to create a tagline that you wanted to sing but couldn't because the timing required way too much concentration. Confident if a tad unwieldy stylings made for a credible but slightly lumpy performance and so we went in search of The Breech... whoop!
