Thursday 29 April 2010

Good Shoes @ Wedgewood Rooms - Portsmouth // 24.05.10 //

+Support from Is Tropical


















Sentence unfriendly trio Is Tropical opened the gig. They must stylize themselves as sound terrorists - covering their faces with hair and bandannas, attacking the audiences' eyeballs with a strobe flash on each beat, perhaps in the hope that it would disguise their unintentional assault on ears. Their music was a bland and lifeless form of electro-rock, and they looked ridiculous - especially as support for the much more sensible Good Shoes.

Good Shoes music, on the last two albums at least, was stifled. Their apparent urgency just didn't quite reach the listener's ears in the way that it should, the intervening technology destroying that vital energy. But live, Rhys Jones singing (usually shouting) and the band's frenetic playing, the is alive. Take Morden, for example; slightly repetitive on the Think Before You Speak LP, but live, with the crowd going mad, the band jump around the stage like they love what they are doing. The one downside to their live sound is that the intricate guitar lines smudge together in all the energy, but it doesn't spoil the fun.

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