Does anyone ever really grasp how crucial refrigerator spaciousness is until it’s too late? My kitchen is a long skinny landlord’s afterthought in human living necessities, that before moving into the flat left us too impressed by the bowling alley length countertop to notice any of the white goods hiding beneath. From standing altitude, you’d never know just how hard you were getting fucked with regards to shelf width, salad drawer depth and door space. So it’s not until you’re all moved in and finally making that first crouch, weary eyes gleaming, seeing your new place full of potential and about to christen the abode by stocking the kitchen with your first inspirational load of groceries, that you realise that this is a play-fridge for children.
Blackcurrant flavoured cider is never my preference, but it’s Wednesday night, it’s all we’ve got, and if we are ever, ever going to be able to stock the fridge with a beverage we actually like, then someone’s gonna need to clear the real estate. Once I’m outside it’s down like medicine over pleasantly paralysed tastebuds from January’s brittle air. I ride the bus I used to get halfway to my heinous cold calling job. It’s nice to sit on the twenty-eight and not feel like a bad guy, but at least when I was a bad guy I knew the stops. I miss my destination and end up at the docks, where the water looks exactly like ink. I faintly taste burst biro as I try to fuzzily visualise the wonky route to Wharf Chambers. You can live in a city for years and still have big mysterious chunks that you only ever end up in accidentally, looking to escape.
After a short cobble-stoned stomp down the Calls (a street which I recognise from several casually-hanging-out-now-quick-get-the-picture type profile shots on websites), I’m at the venue. Wharf Chambers is the type of place that feels like it has been built following a careful and thorough observation of the inherently bullshit elements of many bars and venues. Constructed after noting, and then mercilessly gutting anything that sucks from the blueprint. The bathrooms are for everyone, you can afford the beer, no bigots and no dead animals. They have board games and they’ll let anyone who is ready to give it their best shot put on a show. That’s what I’m here for, to come see Airstream Futures, a band from America on a weeknight for £6. Five or six pounds is my favourite price for a gig; It makes it vulnerably easy to have a really good time and grin your whole way home afterwards, or to not and still feel ok about it. It’s a bit of gas money and no pressure. The dude doesn’t even stamp my hand, he’ll remember.
I’ve heard the name Mean Caesar in my dreams, or in a past life, or in my own head as I read a Scary Clown Presents poster without thinking about it. It’s familiar but I have no idea who they are. Five bodies begin to crowd the stage, their cluster almost rivalling the gathering of us making up the actual crowd (it is still early). You can feel a slight swell in the air, like the bit of tension you give the pull cord of a lawnmower before the massive yank that gets things ripping. Everyone’s feeling it. Then go: band number one spikes in. The first thing I always notice is tempo, and this is nicely set by Mean Caesar: on the right side of mid-pace. Not too slow as to stall the engine (sluggishness some openers can be very guilty of) and I still know I’m listening to a punk band. I could have gone faster, but I’m a maniac. After the first tightly executed song, the singer puzzles us all by stopping to let everyone know in a thick-as-gravy northern accent that the group are here tonight all the way from London. Quickly starting back up, the band sounds sharp and colourful, as if their amplifiers are fitted with stained glass speaker cones. There’s flowing chord movements, crazed shuffling dance moves and cool melodies. Songs short and pleasantly airy like a fresh hair cut; heads are bobbing. Tonight’s stage is almost the size of a disabled toilet cubicle, with the fully fleshed quintet + backline crammed in, and Mr Lead Vocals still makes room to properly dance to his tunes. Lot’s of bands move, but to dance, to really jam, is something different. We do not see it enough at small punk concerts. Their set is over too soon, applause.
The bar tide washes back out, draining the room mostly of people while I remain anchored to watch our second band set up. Failyer, the event page has informed me, hail from the same north Leeds postcode as me, and yet the luggage they’re hoisting up looks totally alien. I snap my fingers (in my head) as it dawns on me that this is a synthesiser band from the future. Some punks might form this realisation with a beer-breathed sigh, but I’ve been to the future before. I once saw a lone boffin shuffle onto a stage backed by what looked like a full 1960’s office’s worth of telephone operator switchboards (in a venue equally as smoky), to perform a full 20-minute solo set. Manipulating and sculpting the same single, cycling tone through this monster rig of synthesiser modules, he was patching cables and massaging knobs until we were totally captivated. So, as the dead air inflates the last few moments before the band starts, I’m feeling hopeful.
The sounds burst in coldly cool, with refreshingly different bulges and abscesses in frequency to all the guitar bands I watch. The slower tempo opens up well-manicured groove space for the drummer, while the flat tone of the very loud bass pins me like a fallen mattress. The singer plays intricate texture sitting at his keyboard workbench, filling out the harmony while swelling and contracting the aggression in his sing-spoken lyrics, dealing with some probably very politically relevant themes. I hear something about masculinity, the words ‘erect’, ‘wall’, and some other phrases I recognise from the news/water cooler, but no wording comes out clear over this kind of sonic artillery. There are some really cool minutes where he shoots up from his stool, ripping the mic from its stand, to drift the limited trajectory the cable affords him, occasionally making huge, impossible leans back over to the keyboard to suddenly slam out pretty difficult looking runs. He carries a barbed, taunting presence. Just before their last tune, the evening is revealed to be their first ever performance. No way. We’re now all (depending on how much we each personally fear public performance) 2-6 times more impressed with their already solid offering. Synth-punk isn’t for every-punk, but if you’re also from the future then Failyer do it well and will probably get better too.
As the stage is stripped of oscillators, the same pregnant silence that preceded the previous acts has become tipsily eroded. The air is buzzy with fragmented conversation, the atmosphere fully stretched and limbered from the hard work (and it is hard work) of our warm-up instructors in the opening bands. This crowd has had their dough balls and their garlic bread and is now, dabbing their mouths off on an enormous shared serviette, hungry for some deep dish. The members of Airstream Futures begin to appear one by one. They look exactly like all of the rest of us. But we are not exactly like them. Their first ‘Hello’ reminds us that unlike them, we are not from the exotic land of Illinois. You can’t underestimate just how powerfully thrilling an accent like that is when delivered by a group of musicians about to perform a certain style of music to a crowd of music fans whose common deep and primary interest in this same sub-genre is built, in majority, on the work of musicians who share this accent, differing from both the accent of the fans, and of the majority of musicians they usually are able to see perform. We all really love American bands. As the first notes ring and limbs start to move, I can’t help but feel my face morph into a huge smile.
Power and cowboy chords played on a dirty black Les Paul by the dancing, tattooed forearms of a scruffy guy having the time of his life. Tight kicks and tighter snares arranged classically in the bouncy punk rocking tradition, somehow seeming to have a kind of gravitational push-pull on all the nodding skulls in the room. Vocals floating on top of the boiling arrangement, passioned, furious and gentle. Each song is delivered as a straight jolt of current alternating between the rose-tinted-yet-gravelly, punk-leaning end of pop-punk, and a colder palette of darker, more minor blooded melodies. With a musical concoction like this, it’s no surprise that Airstream Futures most recent single was produced in part by Derek Grant of Alkaline Trio. Momentum is set towering from the start and drops only temporarily between tunes. Here it is revealed that the vocalist (and presumably usual addresser of the audience, song to song) is off duty for chit chat tonight and has transferred responsibility to the rest of the band while she recovers from illness. At this point, all of the remaining band members fall into either the category of ’tight-squint-big-smile-drunk’ or ‘was-not-given-a-mic’, so banter is pretty sparing, but comes with an infectious good-time spirit. This is demonstrated fittingly with a full band whisky shot straight into the next item on the set. In quick succession, the weird affinity between the way whisky feels going down a throat and the way distorted electric guitar sounds against ears tricks us in the audience into feeling like we’re all included too. Airstream Futures continue to relentlessly taze us until we’re totally numb to the memory of the only halfway finished work week. By the time the last cymbal crashes are fizzling to nothingness, as the architecture creaks under mass herd exit, a total blast has truly been had.
Quit Vision 