I bought my ticket partly to see one of the support acts, Pulled Apart By Horses. The Leeds metallers have been making a noise in more ways that one. A fast lively noise band in their own right, their grunge metal sound though nothing new is pretty fresh coming out of the folk dominating the alternative scene. Live they pull no punches, frontman Tom Hudson gurns and sneers. He poses at the front of the stage, one foot on the monitor. Guitarist James Brown has two moves, one is to pluck the strings above his chord hand to produce a ringing sound, the other can’t be good for his joints; numerous times he jumps and lands on his knees. I can only imagine his knees have gotten used to the beating but a band known for incurring personal injury during their sets a banged knee means little.
We had missed Young Legionnaire, I hear they were pretty good but PABH put up a show, particularly when Hudson downs his beer and decides to go walk about in the crowd. He drinks someone’s beer and ends up on someone’s shoulders being spun around in circles. He finishes the song back on stage, wanders to the side and proceeds to vomit profusely. Not to be deterred he wipes his mouth on a towel a grabs his guitar to finish the set. Live Pulled Apart By Horses are a whirlwind of energy and grit and, like the headliners, well worth a look.
Les Savy Fav are known as a live band, listen to the albums and enjoy rocky punky songs with quite a wide variety of sounds. See them live and the band is something else, guitarists Seth Jabour and Andrew Reuland, bassist Syd Butler and drummer Harrison Haynes play the songs, they are all great musicians who just get on with the job at hand but it’s frontman Tim Harrington who steals the attention. He comes on stage with a hat and a gilet over a sweater and a number of other layers. The clothes soon come off and this bearded goliath of a man sings topless. He unfurls rolls of wrapping paper, wanders through the packed audience. Kicks a couple of guys off a table and takes their place before getting members of the audience to push him across the room on the table, singing as he goes. He climbs the balcony then gets others to hold his legs so he can hang off it before being helped down. He kisses people, hugs them sings with others. Your eyes are split between the stage where four musicians are left to it playing the songs which all sound great, and a singer with a guise as a performing artist who makes the show a show, a spectacle, something worth seeing that you’ll tell your friends about and come back to see again.
Later on a roadie appears with boxes of glow sticks, after pouring one over one of the guitarists, the other boxes are thrown into the crowd, under the UV lights of this gay club the air is soon awash with flying colours, people pick them up and throw them back before, in unison the audience then turns its attention on the stage and a hail of neon colours soon rain down on the band, some of whom take cover behind their instruments. The sheer joy of the glow sticks leaves me smiling for ages, I feel like a kid again picking them up and lobbing them around. By this point Tim has changed and is wearing furry white trousers to which he hooks glow sticks, he also tries to bite the top off one, presumable to spray or pour its content around but he can’t get it off.
Patty Lee, The Sweat Descends, Appetites and I Want You all get played but for a LSF gig its not about the songs, its about performance.
Go see them, it’ll make you happy.
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