Four gigs, one day

Paul Hudson — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 00:24:20 +0000

One of those days when I decided to pack the gigs in.

Staring midday at Daylight Music, with it’s usual eclectic mix of music. This week featuring Japanese music, electronica, and folk. It was a pleasant mix of styles.

Hibiki Ichikawa & Akari

Shield Patterns

Arlet

After the gig I decided to walk down from Union Chapel to Rough Trade West for the first Rough Trade in-store performance of the day, an Australian performer called Lisa Mitchell. A friend had seen her earlier in the week and wasn’t impressed with her performance and I have to admit, she didn’t win me over here. She’s got a fairly decent voice but she just seemed to lack confidence when performing. Still it was free.

Lisa Mitchell

After this gig it was time to head eastwards to Rough Trade East for the Hookworms. Unfortunately, they started late so I didn’t get much of a chance to listen to them. But unlike at the Dome, sound wasn’t an issue here. For the few songs I did hear, they sounded really good. Unfortunately, today was all about one band. The Coathangers who’d I’d been looking forward to for months, so I headed off to get to the Shacklewell leaving me with plenty of spare time before their perfomance.

The Hookworms

I’d caught the Coathangers at SXSW and was impressed with them and I’ve been listening to their albums almost constantly ever since. So I’d been keeping a keen eye out for a UK tour. Sometimes when you look forward to gigs, you end up finding some reason to be disappointed.

The line-up was pretty decent. Tess Parks, the Abjects and Skinny Girl Diet. With the decision to drop by the Hookworms, I knew getting to the Shacklewell to see Tess Parks, a singer who’d impressed me a few weeks earlier, would be out of the question. But I’d hoped I could time it right to catch some of the Hookworms and then the end of the Abjects set. Unfortunately, with the Hookworms starting 15 minutes last and then I mistimed the bus, I arrived 10 minutes later than I’d hoped and just as the Abjects finished their set. Annoying, because it meant I really should have stayed for two or three more Hookworms songs before heading up to the Shacklewell. However, it did mean that I caught the entire Skinny Girl Diet set – a band I’m undecided about, but I thought tonight put in a pretty decent performance.

Skinny Girl Diet

Closing off the evening where the Coathangers. Thankfully, this wasn’t one of those evening where I left disappointed. It was also usually one of those evenings when the Shacklewell ran on time which meant I caught the entire set with plenty of time to catch my train home.

The thing I like about the Coathangers is that they’ve got a great catchy pop-punk sound. Lots of infectious songs that are delivered with a fantastic amount of energy and tongue firmly in cheek. When I saw them at SXSW they were a four piece. But since then they’ve lost a member and are probably the better for it as they seemed tighter than I remembered from SXSW.

I have to admit I was beaming throughout the gig. So happy that the girls were performing so well and that they were as good as I remembered from SXSW (I spend most of time drunk, so it’s always possible that I don’t like a band when sober). This gig was definitely one of my highlights of the year.

The Coathangers

Lisa Mitchell – Down At The Front

Four gigs, one day