It was standing room only at The Zodiac Room last night, which is less impressive than it sounds, given that there were only about ten seats in the joint. With the weather outside grimly thunderous, the bands actually did quite well to muster forty odd payers through the door on the proverbial Dead Wet Tuesday. The quality of the entertainment, unfortunately, was on the variable side.
One of this website’s mottoes is ‘never trust a band with a misspelled name’, and Relik didn’t buck the dismal trend established by ‘The Keyz’ and others. Workmanlike purveyors of the sort of decentish, inoffensive, competent indie rock that Chris Evans used to peddle on TFI Friday back in the nineties, they sounded like they were having a grand old time, even if the end product was pretty predictable.. Fair play to them, as maintaining enthusiasm and commitment in the middle of a yawningly empty cavern takes guts, but invention and melody were rather low in abundance. The high point by far was an excellent cover version of Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire’, which demonstrates yet again that playing other people’s tunes is risky, as it can show up the poverty of your own material.
There was no great improvement in my mood with the appearance of Four Dead in Ohio , who provided ear-splitting, groove-based drone rock in the style of Kasabian, incorporating the usual loops, echoes and phasers. The songs were thoroughly well performed, but boredom set in after fifteen minutes, which is what usually happens to me when I have to listen to bands that are best heard while on drugs (they call it ‘Narcotic Rock’, apparently. Just say no, kids!). The flow was not helped by interminable pauses between the songs, so that the lead guitarist could fiddle with his setup, during which the cynical demon in me kept wanting to yell out, ‘Come on guys, you’re only vamping on a D chord, how hard can that be?’. Inevitably, the mind and eye wandered from band to audience, and I realised that my German friend had been right all along: ninety five percent of English girls dress like prostitutes.
Things picked up a good deal with headliners The Scholars. Original they are not, and their influences are too many to mention, with The Killers, Editors, Interpol and even The Pet Shop Boys lurching alternately into view, like cardboard pop-ups on a shooting range. Still, they have some excellent, singalong tunes, notably ‘This Heart’s Built to Break’ and others from their auspicious debut record ‘Turbulence’, and these were increasingly confidently reeled off as the set progressed. Singer and bassist Adrian Gillet is well-served by his bandmates: he sings in an arch Neil Tennant baritone and often vocalists operating in this range can get drowned out by over-excitable guitarists. In this context, the poise and restraint of Tim Mobbs and Chris Gillet were admirable, meaning that Adrian’s voice came across as authoritative and focussed. Some of the material is a little slight: ‘Paintings’ is little more than a repeated chorus, but Josh Herring’s clever programming gave it an epic grandeur that it probably didn’t deserve. A couple of strong songs from ‘Turbulence’ brought the set to a pleasing end, sending me off into the Stygian murk glad I stuck it out to the finish.