A diverse but delightful bill take to the Shipping Forecast cellar for the last New Blood Club of the year
Words: Patrick Clarke
When I am King
A sonic segue from bludgeoning math-rock to the suavest of scouse neo-pop by way of South Carolina slacker-rock, the New Blood Club‘s final bill of their current run is diverse if nothing else, so much so that with each flit to and fro the smoking area re-enters what seems a different crowd entirely. As we approach just moments too late to catch rock ‘n’ rollers Sun Dog, it’s a considerable slew of smoke-thirsty punters spilling out onto the Slater Street pavement, and a considerable amount more who arrive for heavy-hitting Taws.
The group are an undeniably ambitious one, with enough twists of texture to set out an aim of complete hypnosis, and on occasion unleash a riff of quite considerable fire to do just that. That said, however, there’s still screws to be tightened, and with high-concepts quite clearly in mind they’re just slightly lacking in the faultless cohesion necessary to pull them off; that said, however, at this early stage their self-evident potential is enough to override such hitches, many of which are thanks mostly to their venues perennially blunt acoustics, and their set is an affable and charismatic one.
American rockers Heyrocco follow with a show that conversely revels in incohesion, a louche, disgruntled set that places no emphasis on such petty squabbles as tuning, and for their disaffected directness they’re all the more successful in the dinge of the Shipping Forecast cellar. It’s pop-punk at it’s finest, debonair in its detached drawl, and though their antithesis stylistically has the basement in fine check for the headliners.
When I am King, as mentioned, are yet another vault stylistically, and with ears still ringing from the sheer noise of their predecessors twist the night into one of sumptuous neo-soul. Formerly under the far-flimsier moniker Coffee and Cakes for Funerals, they’re a group to fly the flag for the much-maligned label of mainstream pop, every kick and groove from his faultless band gives Joe Hazlett’s sublimely urbane voals every inch of space to rise with understated majesty to the threshold of the cellar’s low ceiling.
An exalted cover of James Blake‘s Life Round Here pulls the post-dubstep producer’s R’n’B influences to the fore in force, mutating the tune into a lost late-90s classic and to quite remarkable effect, and in their own material too they leave claims well established as one of the finest pop acts Liverpool, perhaps the country, has to offer right now. If Radio 1 hadn’t long since become a complete farce, When I am King would be exactly what they need.
It’s been an unusual, though far from unenjoyable evening, and it’s perhaps testament to the quality of all three bands we manage to catch that though each defies each other stylistically, and each draws in their own distinctive crowd, that across the evening throughout runs a strong undercurrent of mutual appreciation, in performers and onlookers alike an extraordinary atmosphere well-kindled.
