Just another night down at Audio for me, I feel like I’m there about once a week these days, but it’s probably the best little club in Brighton, so I don’t really mind. The opening band were absolute shit. Avoid Teen Sheikhs, if you are able to. Normally, I hate trashing bands, I really do! There’s nothing worse than bad music and having to talk about bad music makes my soul even more sad to relive it than actually hearing it the once, but seriously, avoid Teen Sheikhs. I listened to their music on myspace, and I actually made the effort to get down early to see them play and described their music to a person I knew as a ‘watered down Wavves’. How wrong I was. Their music was all over the place – the drummer had no idea what was going on, the guitar was loud but not in a good way, nothing going on, the vocals were terrible and grating… just all around terrible.
But then! Wavves! I was really stoked to see Wavves because … well, as we all know a lot happened to the kid since I saw him last in April…. The breakdown, the firing of the first drummer guy, the new songs with Zach Hill etc. But I was in for a really weird surprise. Instead of Zach Hill, Jay Reatards former bandmates joined Nathan onstage. He said that three days before they were supposed to leave, Zach broke his hand (or something) and couldn’t go on the tour. Luckily, Stephen Pope (Jay Reatard’s former bassist/fro) and Billy Hayes (Reatard’s former drummer/oddball) were able to fill in and while they were totally rough around the edges, they’d only had one gig and two practices or something like that.
Was this a good gig? Yes and no. No because, well, they were way too unprepared – they couldn’t play some of the songs that people wanted to hear (Mickey Mouse, as suggested by some guy; Weed Demon, as suggested by me) due to the fact that they didn’t know the drums or whatever. But, the redeeming thing about it all was the fact that Nathan just didn’t give a fuck. They played 7 songs. 7 songs for 8 quid. Doesn’t seem like a good bargain, but were the 7 songs good? Hell yeah. Nathan was really on form – the songs were loud and reverby and well, the way they are supposed to be. He was really rocking out – tossing his head the way that he does, but un-fucking-fortunately, nobody else was. It was the tamest Wavves gig I’d ever seen. How anybody can watch Stephen Pope’s fro jump around and see his ridiculous faces, and not jump around and push people, well I don’t know but the hipsters of Brighton certainly do. So it was rough andhad a few stops and starts – but that’s exactly Wavves ethos, and what made me and so many other people love him in the first place. So, short set, lame crowd but yet I still walked out of the gig saying that it was good and I would see him again. Yes, I would. 7/10
View the rest of my Wavves pictures over at my FLICKR.
DOWNLOAD -> MICKEY MOUSE by WAVVES
Tags: wavves
