Amnesty International Benefit Gig

	Sign In Sign-Up

news 'zine e-zine contact links home

Cavern Club, Exeter - 14/8/04

It's all for a good cause...

So, the three bands I most wanted to see (Jarcrew, Cat on Form and San Luis Obispo) all cancelled but hey, it’s all for charity. Amnesty International to be exact.

Callum Mixes Paint were late additions to the bill and played a short set as openers. Apparently Scott, also of Punkemon, once described them as a bit like Mars Volta, which I don’t understand at all; at no point did I feel like I was listening to the soundtrack of an extra terrestrial anal probing. I guess he just meant that they play slightly odd hardcore music, and quite good it is too. Heavy, fast, shouty and very listenable.
7 out of 10

Alfonse play a kind of spacey post-rock which is all well and good in theory but sounds a bit empty in practice. Minimalist music is all well and good but it doesn’t work too well when you’re playing this kind of music. It just cries out to be big and dramatic. That said there was nothing really wrong with it, very calming in fact; add another guitar and you could have something quite special.
6 out of 10

If you drained all of the pomposity out of Matt Bellamy and told it to form a band that band would be Diego Garcia. And they’re the only band I’ve ever heard reach a crescendon’t. They play spacey post-rock too. But they are instrumental and rely far more upon technical skill than having any real tunes. It just goes on for ages before it eventually peters out and leaves you slightly bemused as to what just happened. I have to admit they are excellent musicians. The drum solo was impressive (at the same time as being frightfully bad). Very pretentious stuff though. I know I’m not being helpful here but I can’t work out what’s wrong with them. It’s a good kind of music if done well, they are technically brilliant, all I can suggest is for them to write better songs.
5 out of 10

An Emergency were like a spiky, punky bolt of lightning out of the blue that put life into this increasingly stagnant night. They were quite brilliant. Fast, fun and exciting indie-punk with a huge amount of energy behind it. The two guitars and no bass combo just adding to the effect of the jagged, stop-start riffs and some really, really fantastic drumming. Expect to see a lot more of An Emergency, if there’s any justice in the world.
8 out of 10

Lamb Quartet are still sounding like the mutant offspring of Mike Patton and a circus clown. Which is a good thing in case you were wondering. Tonight they seemed in a particularly playful mood, possibly enjoying themselves more than the audience were but it all made great viewing. The only slight gripe that I have is that their best songs all seem to be the older ones, their new material is good but not as good, it would be sad to think they’d peaked already, especially when they are capable of so much more.
8 out of 10

But after tonight’s two pools of fun we were left with The Murder of Rosa Luxembourg, which was a bit of a shame really. It was a return to the pretentious and uninspired post-rock of earlier tonight but this time with grating emo vocals on top of it all. Incidentally, someone should teach their vocalist how to use a microphone, putting your hand on top of it while singing doesn’t help. For the whole of the first song I wasn’t even sure if it had been turned on. The point is that they don’t cut the mustard, there are so many better bands out there doing similar things that it is hard to see where they can fit in. Sorry.
5 out of 10