Manchester Academy
27-09-23
Woah – Manchester – yes! – music – cool music – yes! – let’s do this, eh? So off I went to see Brummieband ‘Jaws’, a decade into their unification as a quirky, quality, quintessentially catchy quartet – whose shoegazing, starry-laden anthems are so infectiously cool, like, it’s a reyt smart do. So, off I tripp’d to the nation’s second city, piercing it’s night-breathing streets into the university district & the Academy venues, of which the ‘Club’ was playing host to tonight’s frolics.
Getting down with the kids, I arriv’d half way thro the support band, Sounds Mint, another quartet, this time from London – I got Red Hot Chilli Peppers meets Joy Division kinda vibes -, who seem’d to be going completely over the heads of the student-dominated, Manc-infus’d crowd. I could see what they were trying to create, they were delivering, but weren’t really energizing the place.
I think if I’d have witness’d them in their natural environment the room would have exploded – especially when the dreadlock’d singer whipp’d his top off. I’m not gay, like, but wow, what a physique & scowl-a-prowl; I’ve never felt the intensity & the feel of music increase so much, elevating with of tribal energy, after such a Chippendales moment before!
Then the crowd got bigger, & excited, & on postur’d Jaws. Like I said at the start of the review, wow! really cool, especialy after a few shots of ‘tequila no fucking about’ (i.e. no lime & salt). Jaws embellish our lives with decent guitar music – like a less in-your-face Gomez -, all melodical & twangy & droney ubercool & bangin’!
As I engag’d completely with the experience, I found myself surrounded by proper true fans – a seven yearer on one side, six gigs into his odyssey, & four yearer on the other who’d seen just as many gigs – & me in the middle goin’ I can see why yer fuckin’ like these boys, boys! A few of the tunes really stood out on my first hearing, which I’ll embed in the reviews – ‘Just a Boy,’ ‘End of the World,’ ‘Think Too Much Feel Too Little’ & ‘All My Friends Are Alright.’
Jaws are a right mad band, an ark of supergeekerie! Front man Connor Schofield sings beautifully as he strums his shiny guitar, while Eddy Geach pounds his drums, who to me is probably the real star of the show, he is reyt good. There’s also a riduculously funky-looking geezer on bass call’d Leon Smith, & the constantly chirpy, sound-effect carouselly Alex Hudson on lead guitar.
As a whole they work really well, & let’s hope they take the bull by the horns, find some, like, Welsh farm house somewhere, pop a load of shrooms & write that eternal classic album that’s in their collective soul somewhere.
Damo
Mumble Music 