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Date -
22/01/05 |
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| Readers' score - None |
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| Reviews |
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King Adora / Deadtime Stories / Shard
@ Junction 7, Nottingham
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| Having been screwed in the arse with a supposed guestlist place once before with King Adora I decided to just buy tickets this time. I’m mostly glad I did. |
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I normally like my music to be as image-free as possible, so Shard faced an uphill struggle to convince me of their merits right from the start. Make-up, very-glam clothes and slightly ‘Flock of Seagulls’ haircuts everywhere, you can tell Shard are going hard for a certain appearance and thus I concluded they would probably sound like The Cure but wouldn’t have had time to write any songs. Well, it’s lucky for me I stayed to watch them because in the end I actually quite enjoyed it. Although I’d put money on the main vocalist having ‘Robert Smith’ at the very top of his list of influences, the majority of the songs aired tonight nevertheless had enough of their own identity and substance to keep me and the crowd entertained, smiling, and nodding along.
Sporting the occasional heavy riff to push things slightly towards Marilyn Manson territory but staying for the most part within the realms of gothic pop (especially when the bassist took a vocal turn – she possesses an angelically sweet voice and rules the stage with a self-assured air), Shard nevertheless managed to carve out a tiny niche for themselves despite some potentially over-obvious influences. Ones to watch, I think.
While Shard looked like they were still at college, Deadtime Stories looked very much like they’d been at this game for a good few years indeed. Presenting a blend of 70s/80s hard rock and glam stylings the band were certainly out to have a good time and had more than a couple of very vocal fans in attendance, but lacked a certain x-factor to really kick things off. No real tunes to speak of apart from a couple of catchy choruses and a generic approach to songwriting meant that the best moment of the night was a nifty combination of The Beatles’ “Day Tripper” and The Who’s “Pinball Wizard”. Enjoyable, but not too memorable on this performance at least.
And so to the headliners, King Adora. A few years ago now KA were a good example of image not overshadowing material, but on tonight’s performance it doesn’t seem like they’ve written any decent new material in the last 4 years. “Bionic”, “Big isn’t Beautiful”, “Smoulder” and “Suffocate” remain top-notch singalong rock tracks, but nothing else came close to being as entertaining. And not being a band given to epic musical exploration or moving instrumentalism and the like, the remainder of the set just sounded like bog-standard filler to my ears. There was a hint of their not really being arsed too, which may have contributed to the lack of spark in the material, and maybe the songs sound better on 2004’s Who do you Love? album. But things were certainly a little flat tonight.
Photos courtesy David Wills (thecabal@evilemail.com) |
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| Dan Snowdon |
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