The Great Escape, Brighton – Part Two

Best Coast by Mitchell Stirling

Friday March 14, 2010

Waking up to a surprisingly glorious day,  we think nothing better of spending the entire morning on the beach, with newspapers and highlighters for planning tonight’s action. A regular appearance for Muso’s Guide at birthday boy David Quantick’s fiendishly hard music quiz sees us competing against Simon Price and various professional journalists and Stephen Morris of New Order – we fall to 4^th despite being in the leading pack throughout and vow to come back next year and at least recapture our silver medals from 2008 and 2009. Quantick’s many references to Stephen Patrick Morrissey throughout the quiz led to us having a discussion about THAT 1992 NME cover on the seafront, just as Johnny Marr, in town for Thursday’s secret Cribs show, walks past, clearly overhearing us. Whoops!

Like last year’s secret (ish) Babyshambles open air gig from Levi’s Ones To Watch at Audio we go along for the North East’s finest The Futureheads. Between their staccato banter and jokes they rattle through latest single and title track from The Chaos as well as crowd pleasers ‘Carnival Kids’, ‘Decent Days and Nights’ ‘and of course ‘Hounds of Love’, atop the terrace with the palm trees in the dimming light. “You can probably see right up my nose into my brain”, remarks Barry from his lofty perch to the crowd. Giving the trauma they went through with 679 elbowing them less than two years ago it’s great to see them still going and whilst they aren’t quite capturing the sound of the zeitgeist nowadays they are still churning out great tunes and strong, steady albums. This gets a rousing cheer from us.

The Futureheads by Tom Bunning and Nic Serpell-Rand

Another tradition is to see something on Horatio’s on the pier at some point, even if it means Alphabeat again. Continuing our habit of capturing lo-fi American acts over the weekend we are there for some Chillwave from Best Coast on the NME radar stage, if we couldn’t find the words to describe what songs like ‘Sun Was High (So Was I)’ and ‘So Gone’ sound like we provided by visual representation on the way out, as the sun dipped below the tallest seafront buildings searing its orange reflection across the water. With their new album on the way in August and new EP Kaledie available now we move on to see Sky Larkin and their new slightly crunchier and smoother sound at Life as well as old favourites ‘Antibodies’, ‘Matador’ and ‘Beeline’ among the packed arches. We are really looking forward to hearing what the follow up to The Golden Spike throws up.

After a great deal of faffing about we decide that the only show in town for us is Susanne Sundfør at Unitarian Church, another great venue and the best gig of the weekend.  Sundfør comes on stage in a frilly bottomed blue dress, sits at her keyboard and plays without interruption for thirty minutes, segueing between her songs with delicate notes and scales. We definitely picked out ’The Brothel’ and ‘Walls’ in the suite but mainly we were just stunned into silence by Sundfør’s incredible voice filling the venue. On finishing she simply says thank you and walks backstage to rapturous applause.

Susanne Sundfør by Mitchell Stirling

I decide that the best way to definitely see Wild Beasts again at Uncut’s showcase is to get in early. The band admit that they’ve not played for two weeks so their stage banter is suffering, but this small hiatus hasn’t dented their live sound any as they storm through the highlights of the sure to be Mercury Nominated Two Dancers and their debut, Limbo, Panto.

Thinks start to get hazy as we end up on Dyke Road (no really) for the Moshi Moshi after party but the only band we get anywhere near are Chapel Club in the queue.

No related posts.