Japanese Voyeurs + Page 44 + Xcerts + Dinosaur Pile Up @ Birmingham Academy, 23rd February 2011

Initially, we were down to review Japanese Voyeurs as headliners but this being the Rock Sounds Exposure Tour there wasn’t any particular pecking order at this comfortably full, pleasantly ego free event. Nevertheless, the JVs stamped their mark indelibly during the second of four sets, more of whom later.

Local band, Page 44, stampeded through a literally breathless set of snappy, staccato, post-punk grunge. Unimpeded by their youthful exuberance they snarled and howled with echoes of Sham 69, Killers and Baby Shambling naughty behavior when let loose in the adventure playground area of Maximo Park. With so much going on they’ve a lot to condense and distill if they’re to establish a niche. With thrashed guitar bleeding fingers matching their damn near bleeding cheek one could but not admire their undoubted dedication.

Just as a charming, bespectacled, retro-tweed Parisian styled slick chic young lady asked me to mind her pint, a train-crash trashed the stage with visceral, siege-engine mayhem. What the ****? The Xcerts, if you please.

Guitar driven brain-bleeding anger all severed up in a barbed-wire broken glass sandwich. We took it as a given that the night was a celebration of all things post, possibly proto, Grunge. Particularly with guitarist, Murray Macleod. Having raided his parent’s Rory Gallagher, Screaming Blue Messiah’s and the mother-lode of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and Foo Fighters blahdy blah collections is not only forgivable, it’s commendable. And since I’ve a soft spot for explorative guitarists, his nuanced phrasing recalled Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Michael Brooks’ ‘infinite guitar’ on the album ‘Miss America’. His use twin mics allowed for both mellow and bellow counter-distorted vocal rages. Aberdonian of origin, touring their debut album ‘In The Cold Wind We Smile’ this is a damn fine band. Catch them at the Flapper, April 12th. PS. Young lady, your pint’s gone flat, and hey kids, not wise to leave your drink unattended!

Closing set from Dinosaur Pile-Up, yes, Pile-Up, thank you, were another guitar trio determined to exploit post punk, metal antecedents with unashamed grunge leakage seething through out their finger blistering set. I Adored the opening number that had the heavenly harmonies of Cream’s ‘I Feel Free’ all over it. Got a bit (well a lot, actually) Nirvana tribute during the second number and I’m sure there was a Frankenstein fumbling of Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’ going on somewhere. Again, utter dedication and with punters going ultra bonkers what’s not to like?

Now then, Japanese Voyeurs. Hmm! They intro with a moodily solemn, monkish plain-chant. And that’s nice, for a fleeting moment. And then men and woman possessed go mad mosh, long-haired, head banging ludicrously chaotic all in choreographed perfect sync. Wonderful.

Butterfly fragile, porcelain brittle, singer Romily Ellis is every Geography teacher’s Friday afternoon detention nightmare. Her paint-stripper viscous, banshee lung bursting tantrums, sneering affectations and hair plugged directly in to the national grid are most agreeable.

They make excellent use of the nice cop/utter bastard cop subtle dynamics of fright and shade. The clincher for me was the gloomy, weedy keyboards that go all the way back to Iron Butterfly’s ‘In A Gadda Da Vida’: come on, you watch The Simpsons?

You like sharks doing tongues? Blowing condom chewing gum bubbles in the Vatican? Set your Gran’s head spinning with an Exorcist kissogram? This is the band for you.

Set list: You’re so cool, Get hole, Dumb, Blush, Milk teeth, Closer, Smother me.

Review – John Kennedy
Photos – Ian Dunn

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