Every Day SuperHeroes, Colly Strings, Under Stars and Gutters @ Lavery’s Bunker – 4/6/2010

June 16, 2010 3 Comments

After hurtling down the M1 at all kinds of breakneck speeds, here I was, taking up my usual position in Lavery’s Bunker for another night of musical enlightenment. Casting my candid and objective eye over local talent for you beautiful people out there…why, it’s nothing short of an honour.

Okay, down to business. The first band to take to the stage, in association with Topman, was Colly Strings. I have to admit, being quite the bitter cynic, I wasn’t expecting much from these lads, what with the skinny jeans, fringes and belts that don’t actually hold their trousers up.

But the quality of their set soon cooled my fiery prejudice. Boasting a fine array of pop tinged rock tunes, resplendent with the jangly guitar tones of Paramore, the vocal stylings of the Kings of Leon and a songwriting talent beyond their years, they put on a great show and it baffles me as to how they got lumbered with the opening slot.

When they slow the pace they evoke a quality not unlike vintage U2, which suggests depth and maturity beyond their years. Armed with the strongest voice of all the singers on the bill, Colly’s front man blew me away and, coupled with an unassuming charm, he really added that little X factor to proceedings. All in all, a good showing from the boys in Colly Strings and you can be sure they’ll move on to bigger and better things.

Up next was Everyday Superheroes. With a sound that exists somewhere between the pop stylings of the Strokes and the more emotive qualities of Paramore (Editor’s note: bit of a recurrent theme here!), I was immediately impressed with just how good each individual instrument sounded.

Despite the band expressing their displeasure with the sound quality afterwards, during the gig I really thought it was excellent, especially the guitar and bass sections. They displayed close band chemistry and produced some solid tunes but I honestly believe that their front woman needed to do a little more with her performance.

Maybe it was because she was hard to make out over the rest of the band, but I really feel that their songs could have been brought to life by a much more active presence from her.

She didn’t seem terribly comfortable with the role of front woman and as a result their songs tended to meander along with nothing remarkable about them. I’m not knocking her vocals, they were rock solid from what I could tell.

It’s just that this kind of music needs a charismatic singer to really turn solid enough songs into truly catchy numbers. But a decent showing from the Superheroes nonetheless. Special thanks to bassist, Mark, for being so welcoming and hospitable all evening.

Onto the headliners, Under Stars and Gutters: a punk trio from the North Coast…hmmm, didn’t really enjoy these guys. The sound quality wasn’t particularly good. The guitar was lost under a torrent of cymbals and vocalist Adam Carrol had his mic up a little too loud.

The fact that he sounds just like Chris Demakes from Less Than Jake and looks quite similar to Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead is an oddity in itself. But the power-punk style music that these guys churn out didn’t really translate.

A lot of the charm was lost because the guitar melodies were drowned out and for the most part it was like getting shouted at by an annoying American teenager.

Understandable if it was an annoying American singing but from what I understand it wasn’t, so take from that what you will. The end result was a lot of fairly samey material with no real character and bogus accents.

The guys were up there having a good time and did put on an energetic and entertaining show but the music just didn’t cut it. A disappointing end to what was a hit and miss night at Lavery’s.

By Ryan Bentley

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