LIVE: Spotlight Kid EP Launch

The minute you walk into The Chameleon you feel at home, the atmosphere is welcoming and friendly and the living room turned venue area invites you to feel at ease, leaving you free to enjoy the range of good music on offer. Twenty Year Hurricane are a great warm up act, their toe tapping brand of folk rock keeping in synch with the homey surroundings but still makes you want to get up off the (extremely comfortable) sofas and dance.

The first real draw of the night though is renowned music photographer Steve Gullick’s endeavour on the stage instead of in front of it, The Tenebrous Liar. Blending aspects of grunge, folk and good old fashioned rock n roll with Gullick’s fantastic and powerful voice, the band have a real presence, especially in a small room, which makes you wonder why they aren’t more famous. Maybe because they are not always a comfortable listen, often raw and unflinchingly honest but always nothing more or less than a great band. 

 After an impressive set from the support bands, Nottingham natives, Spotlight Kid have a hard act to follow, but the sextet, including three guitarists, look confident as they step onto the stage. The sheer force of having so many instruments is impressive enough without the strobe lighting they employ throughout their set, frankly I could have done without it, but it unfortunately also tends to drown out vocalist Rob McCleary’s voice, which in the quieter moments, proves itself to be one of the bands real strengths. The band are gracious enough to name check their influences; they touchingly dedicate one to the late Sparklehorse front man Mark Linkous. Yet, they have a strong and individual sound that is hard to pin down, but stems as much from grunge as it does from the Shoegaze era of British music in

Spotlight Kid - Photo by Ricki Lage

the early 90s. Two maybe contradictory sounds, but which this band show can mix together like a great big Sonic Youthesque cocktail.