The Wheatsheaf is really packing them in this year, and 2010’s first Three Blind Mice gig proved irresistible to at least a hundred payers. Whether it’s the recession-friendly three pound cover charge, their emphasis on tried and proven local acts, or their free provision of retro-chic confectionery at the door (I heartily recommend the White Mice and am holding out for Skullcrushers), these fairly inexperienced promoters seem to be doing very little wrong at the moment.
Regular viewers of this website know that it is a great cheerleader for Faringdon-based pastoralists Message to Bears. Their contemplative, almost pantheistic electronic folk, with its epic, cinematic quality, is loved and admired by pretty much everyone I play it to. I was a little worried that the cloistered, small-scale nature of most of their tunes wouldn’t translate to a beery, noisy venue like the Wheatsheaf. In the event, I needn’t have worried as the twenty minute set, played without breaks, entranced the vast majority of the audience from the get-go. Main man Jerome Alexander was joined by a second guitarist, bassist, drummer and violinist, and the band rendered his compositions very faithfully, though the rhythm section seemed to be straining at the leash at first- perhaps they are frustrated Pantera devotees at heart.
It was time to pick the tempo up and who better to get the joint jumping than Alphabet Backwards? James Hitchman’s sometimes exhaustingly cheery five piece were in their element playing to a near capacity audience and really should have headlined. For those that don’t know, they play uptempo acoustic pop enlivened by Rob Thomas’s ingenious analogue synth interjections. The boy-girl harmonies are supremely infectious and everyone on stage is generally jumping around like a mad thing, defying you not to like them. So long as you ignore the dodgy lyrics (sample: “I bought you a lolly to say I’m sorry”), you’ll have a jolly old time, unless you’re Michel Houellebecq or Gordon Brown.
Alphabet Backwards are always a terrible act to follow, but maxi-folk outfit We Aeronauts should have done as well as anyone else in town. They write wonderful folk melodies, their EP exudes bonhomie and friendship and they have a steadily growing following. So why were they so awful tonight?
It didn’t help that they took forever to get set up, causing myself and others to split before the end. But the performances didn’t exactly compel us to stay. A wretched version of “Boatswain’s Cry”, with dreadful singing, hopeless instrumental balance and a lame mouth-harp solo got things off to a bad start, and the would-be ethereal beginning to Fleet River just sounded like someone had left a delay pedal looping for an eternity. “The House on Ash Tree Lane” was better, a spirited boy-girl duet that seemed to have absorbed some of Alphabet Backwards’ brio, but in general the band seemed to have succumbed to complacency, remaining as ragged as they were a year ago. They need to lose that sense of studenty smugness, clean up the arrangements and refocus, otherwise they will go down as an underachieving Stornoway-lite. With so much talent at their disposal, that would be a tragedy.