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Bido Lito! April 2015 Reviews
Sleaford Mods (John Johnson / johnjohnson-photography.com)
unambiguous, but luckily they have the
ability to back up a brassy introduction
with compelling songs. Having previously
supported the headliners throughout the past
three years, it's easy to see why they're such
a great fit, with just the right amount of alt.
rock scuzz and ethereal synthyness to appeal
to any fan of Brian Molko et al.
The opener is short, sweet and punky, though
songs like Piranhas demonstrate a sonic
deftness that pairs well with a pretty impressive
light show for a support act: red lights and
smoke mix with churning, intense swathes
of shoegaze distortion, interspersed with the
snarling delivery of frontman Gary Moore.
Enthusiastic and well put together, the only
thing working against the Scots is the fact that
the crowd now crammed into Mountford Hall,
all black clothes and pasty faces, are here to see
one band and one band only.
If The Mirror Trap teased the crowd, the
opening notes of PLACEBO’s mega-hit Pure
Morning takes one hand and rams it straight
down the front of their trousers, filling the
venue with ear-splitting screams as frontman
Brian Molko and drummer Stefan Olsdal stride
out onto the stage, bolstered with the addition
of extra musicians, including a violin player and
a couple of extra guitarists.
Abrasive buzzsaw guitars, pounding drums
which feel like a cannonball straight to the
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solar plexus, and Molko's wailing vocals all
contribute to a colossal sound that's just as
powerful, if not better than, Placebo’s recorded
output. This is no doubt down to the fact that
the band have been on the road and living in
the groove for twenty-odd years. Regardless,
they still manage to conjure up an energy
and exuberance that would put the hungriest
of new bands to shame, where many of their
contemporaries would have been all too
happy to slide into the quagmire of half-arsed
complacency.
Plenty in the crowd will have been old enough
to remember when Placebo first burst onto the
scene in the mid-90s, providing an answer for
those looking for something a bit different than
the Britpop bands that dominated the charts;
and it's therefore unfortunate that the band,
whether intentionally or not, omit many of the
hits that cemented them as alternative heroes
in the first place.
Leaning heavily on new material, with a few
tried-and-trusted classics thrown in for good
measure, it's just slightly disappointing that
they miss a trick in not performing songs like
Nancy Boy, though particular highlights of the
Boy
set include For What It's Worth and the band's
2003 reworking of Kate Bush classic Running
Up That Hill (A Deal With God). Perhaps they’re
God)
just getting a little sick of playing the classics.
Nevertheless, with the reception awarded to
set closers Post Blue and Infra-red, it seems that
when it comes to the crowd, the Placebo effect
is still just as powerful as it ever was.
Ryan McElroy
SLEAFORD MODS
EVOL @ The Kazimier
In an age of austerity where the workingclass are once again being trampled upon by
waxy-faced Eton toffs and their banker friends,
whilst simultaneously being portrayed as lazy,
benefit-scrounging scum, it is natural that there
will be a reaction. Though politically-inflected
music can often be a painful and embarrassing
thing to witness there are those who wear it
well. Tonight's headliners SLEAFORD MODS are
prime examples.
With the room at fever pitch, they emerge
and launch into a predictably riotous display.
They are a strange spectacle to behold: as
Jason Williamson circles and attacks his
microphone like an amphetamine-pumped
hyena, producer Andrew Lindsay stays within
two feet of his laptop, swaying gently and
nursing his beer. This is not because he is kept
busy with producing live sounds, as he simply
presses play on a pre-recorded track at the
start of each song. But this dichotomy of onstage personas really works, and Williamson
has enough energy to be up there on his own.
The set moves from one intense moment
to the next. Everything from the Job Centre to
Cameron to cheap cider to various celebrities
are subject to Williamson's poetic torrents
of abuse, and it becomes clear that the man
has a Malcom Tucker-esque gift for the use
of a swear word. Nihilistic and angry, the
lyrics take everything in scorn yet somehow
seem to turn inwards, signalling a certain
hopelessness and ideological void that
Williamson perhaps detects in himself. Lines
such as “I got called an anarchist, but that's
for the middle-class train spotters” signal
his attitude towards certain identities, and
the pair are undoubtedly a difficult entity to
summarise. For a generation that gets most of
their world news stories from Vice, Williamson
and Lindsay seem symptom ]X