CLEAN CUT KID // THE WARDROBE, LEEDS
Friday night gigs are great are great aren’t they? No work tomorrow so you don’t need to worry about rushing home straight afterwards and of course you can always enjoy a drink or two, if that’s your thing! This Friday night took us to the Wardrobe in Leeds to see Clean Cut Kid, back on tour after a year away writing and recording new material.
PICTURE: LAURA TOOMER
★★★★☆
Our favourite night of the week, in one of our favourite venues enjoying one of our favourite bands. The ingredients were all there for this to be a great night!
We started off with something new, Peach Fuzz are a new band with a nostalgic feel. Is it me or does anyone else get the sense that we are enjoying something of an 80’s revival at the moment? The synthesised keyboard sounds that were typical of that era are certainly becoming more common again and Peach Fuzz continued with that trend. Indeed lead singer Nathaniel Cummings took that one stage further with a psychedelic outfit and make up that wouldn’t be out of place in any New Romantic set up of the time. They offered a vibrant and exciting opening to tonight’s events and their Psych Rock sound got things off to a cracking start. New single ‘Destroy the Evidence’ was a real treat, as was the rest of the set to be fair.
Signed to Skeleton Key records and boasting stablemates such as She Drew the Gun and of course The Coral they are in great company to continue the trend of new independent music and are definitely one to look out for.
Clean Cut Kid of course have been here before and are now experienced hands on the live music scene. Despite, as mentioned having a year out and recording a new album any fears Mike Halls may have had about being rusty were short lived. Arriving on stage to a fairly dramatic entrance of mood lights and the odd bit of smoke, in no time at all it was like they had never been away.
The energy they put into their performances is always impressive, as is the quality of the music and the new material certainly picks up where they left off. ‘Slow Progress’ and ‘Jason’ were particularly well received and the back story to how it came about with the death of an old school friend showed the depth of feeling Clean Cut Kid put in to their music writing. This band are very passionate about what they do and that is apparent in each and every performance they give. Even the instruments are given the personal touch with guitars Ev, Cath and Minnie all being rotated depending on the musical requirements.
As well as the new material we were of course treated to some old favourites, ‘Vitamin C’ and Emily bringing to a close what was, as expected a terrific night. The gig was surprisingly short at only 1 hour long and their being no encore was as also a little surprising however what we had was of the highest quality from a really impressive live band.
Please sir, can we have some more!