Fields - Photo by Helen Gellion
Upstairs in the Red Rooms and Fields and playing as a stripped down two-piece. Their bare-bones performance, just vocals and guitar, captures the charming ‘everyman’ romance of their songs. They even squeeze in a reference to meeting in the Market Square, which was surely only thrown in to win LeftLion’s approval!
Timothy J Simpson - Photo by Helen Gellion
Timothy J Simpson is without his backing band The Monstrous Dead, but still manages a rousing performance in the Main Bar area. An under-celebrated singer-songwriter in Nottingham, he combines warmth, wit and honesty into toe-tapping acoustic ditties. A performer with a big heart and big talent.
Opie Deino - Photo by Helen Gellion
In the Main Room, Opie Deino is melting hearts and making fans with her beautifully crafted songs and bewitching voice. In all honestly, she looks a little lost up on that high stage, but still manages to holds her own as she plays acoustic versions of tracks from her debut EP, which do away with the pop-punk tendencies of the recorded versions and instead are turned in to lovelorn gilded gems.
Joe Slater - Photo by Helen Gellion
Joe Slater is a man not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. With a home made Black Flag logo stuck to his guitar, he plays a set of emotive acoustic folk/punk, not too dissimilar to Frank Turner, throwing in a cover of the Postal Service’s Such Great Heights much to my delight.
Injured Birds - Photo by Helen Gellion
Injured Birds aka Sam Kirk is quickly charming the pants off the Red Room’s audience. Without his usual band, Sam is accompanied by just his banjo-ukulele and his velvet voice and must be finding it hard to be heard over the noise of the band downstairs that is bleeding through the doors. But he performs admirably in the face of such obstacles, with his songs brimming with old English charm that incite a sense of whimsical nostalgia.
We Show Up On Radar - Photo by Helen Gellion
We Show Up On Radar make delicate indie-pop that’s often bursting with colour and sound, epitomised by his debut album release, which is a multi-colour all out pop affair. Keeping with the theme of the first part of this evening, Andy Wright keeps it strictly acoustic and his solo set of gentle ballads gently waft around the Main Room of the Rescue Rooms.
The ‘after-party’ takes place upstairs in the Red Rooms and is a full on electric assault of noise and aggression. If the Acoustic Rooms part of this evening wanted to gently caress you, the Our True Intent part is determined that we all go home with a little less of our hearing.
Sleaford Mods - Photo by Helen Gellion
First up it’s recent LeftLion interviewees Sleaford Mods who play tracks from their recent album Wank along with a few older songs. It’s cathartic stuff considering what has come earlier in the evening, with frontman Jason spitting vitriol and bile over looped beats. It’s part punk, part spoken word, but all skill, as he takes pot shots at anyone and anything that riles him, with local scenesters a favourite target. It shouldn’t work, but the reason why it does is that what he’s saying is spot on and you can’t help but nod in agreement. If there ever was a Notts Poet Laureate, it should be him.
Grey Hairs - Photo by Helen Gellion
By this time of the night I’m loosing track of my senses and it’s not helped by the fact that Grey Hairs make me feel like I’m being crushed by a tsunami of noise and volume. Within that noise there is spiky, pulsating punk rock that seems intent of welding grunge, krautrock, garage and surf in to a timeless cacophony that hits like a shot of adrenalin. It feels refreshing, and beyond all of the knowing references, it’s fun music to lose your shit to. Which I gladly do. It all ends in a sea of flailing limbs as the band one after the other throw themselves in to the drumkit.
White Finger - Photo By Helen Gellion
It’s down to White Finger to wrap up the whole evening, which they do with style. Following Grey Hairs’ lead in attempting to play dirty, punky riffs as loud as possible and shouting over the top; they add an extra theatrical twist as frontman Joey Bell is climbing the PA stacks one minute and the next he is ripping of his shirt and throwing himself around the stage. You wouldn’t think it was only their second show as they play with swagger and confidence. And volume, natrually.
Acoustic Rooms Vs Our True Intent took place at Rescue Rooms on Friday 17 August 2012.
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