Fucking worth every penny. Oh wait, I didn’t pay.
Fuck it. I’m not apologising at this late stage. My love is bigger than your love. mclusky rock harder than the average band. SING IT! My love is bigger than your love. mclusky rock harder than the average band. SING IT! The finest shows are the ones where you step into oblivion for eons at a time, only to be rudely yanked back into the present by a singer making wan jokes about Kings Of Leon while frothing caustic soda in the vague direction of Johnny Depp and all who have drifted listlessly alongside her. The greatest shows are the ones you cannot recall in any sensible detail, only the stop-start surges and the bassist pummelling his instrument so violently – thrashing, pitching, detonating – you fear for the ceiling joists. The greatest shows possess LOUD, unforgettable choruses and a vocalist who unleashes righteous maelstrom after righteous maelstrom, refusing to relent, refusing to inhale, until he is certain the skirmish is over and then, only then, unleashes an exorcism of invective and exquisitely barbed humour. The best gigs have the drummer caged for his own safety. SING IT!
There are few bands who could follow the sheer welter and torrent and piss-stream of emotion that is mclusky’s opening number, ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues,’ with another dozen or so songs that match it blow for blow. (I type “match,” but it’s clear the band pour every reserve of pent-up frustration into this set.) There are few bands who stand shoulder to shoulder with The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, or that last great gush of Chicago ’93 squalor, and somehow appear to be more than the equal. There are few bands who can conjure the sweet sneer of early Seething Wells, the verve of Courtney Barnett, the bone-dragging gravity of Swans; few bands who can evoke The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire’s scorched-earth energy and still rock harder than most all combined. I am guessing. Didn’t you read my opening sentences? All I truly remember is a welter of energy and a torrent of steam and a piss-flap of noise: harmonies wrought sacred through shouting, shouting abruptly curtailed by laughter, laughter feeding back into the happiest crowd I’ve witnessed for at least a couple of days.
There are few bands brazen enough to title their songs ‘Kafka-Esque Novelist Franz Kafka’, ‘Way Of The Exploding Dickhead’, ‘Unpopular Parts Of A Pig’ and the epoch-crushing ‘Alan Is A Cowboy Killer’, charge straight through the promise and out the other side. There are few bands who can return after years of absence 1,000 times more energised than when they first appeared. I am still guessing here. Don’t you read my words? I cannot recall a single coherent second of mclusky’s set – only the force, the velocity, the electricity, the refrain hammering through my skull: MY BAND ROCKS HARDER THAN YOUR BAND! Sing it.
I want to mention the first band on, too: M. Woodroe. If I have any secret at all when it comes to music, it is this: turn up early enough to see the fucking support. Case in point: the uncannily monikered M. Woodroe (your guess is as good as mine). On at 10 minutes past doors, and worth every second of the wait. Stage left seemed to channel a patchwork of female-fronted rock and unrock – PJ Harvey, Scout Niblett, even a brush of early Sonic Youth. Stage right leaned more traditionally male, but in the best possible way: post-Slint, post-My Bloody Valentine, post-everything I’ve never encountered. Songs slithered and shook themselves into form, molten and restless, sometimes scarily soft, sometimes scarily not. Twice, my party of two exchanged a conspiratorial “New Eves?” – and we were properly thrilled at the thought, because New Eves and their ilk deserve far more allies than they have.
Such a great evening.
P.S. I also dug Post Common‘s post-hardcore stylings.
