It seems like a no-brainer to comment on the difference between live gigs and recorded music. One is temporary, communal and fleeting, the other is toiled over, tinkered with and ultimately static. It seems obvious, yet some bands forget that merely replicating their recorded efforts is not enough. Dananananaykroyd are not this band. Nestled in the middle of a three band bill, the Glaswegian racket-mongers serve an indelible lesson in showmanship.
But first, Jesus H Foxx (5 members, 1.5 drum kits and a cowbell). Quietly confident, they worked their way through some jaunty post-rock, harking back to Pavement and across to Vampire Weekend, with a few stand-out sing-a-long choruses. A charming start to the night, it was a pleasant appetiser to the real draw.
Danan… (2 kits, 6 band members and one drawn-on moustache) refer to their own music as ‘fight pop’. When laid out on vinyl it’s a voluminous, technical and playful flirtation with the hardcore genre. Multitudinous torrents of guitar drown out startled yell vocals and a bit of sass implies that their idea of a fight would be a cheeky bop to the head before dancing away.
Played live, the mischievous bells and whistles are stripped away in a show of brute strength, raw and unpredictable. The force of it propelled one third of the band off the stage and into the front rows where they spent most of the set tangling the punters up in cables and nearly chibbed them with guitars.
Accidental maiming aside, the atmosphere was convivial, bordering on the sickeningly harmonious when singer Calum organised a ‘wall of death’-style ‘wall of cuddle’. You could gripe that time playing parlour games is time that could have been used to play more songs. But that would be to miss the point: that live music is a full-body, visceral experience and the sound isn’t the half of it. Moreover, it’s expected now at their live shows.
How do you top that? You don’t. But Johnny Foreigner valiantly tried. With only 3 members and 1 drum kit they make up the numbers with a smorgasbord of loop and pedal effects. Their tight, noisy, new wave indie was what most of the crowd were there for, and they didn’t disappoint. Danan…even felt compelled to rectify their drum scarcity by bringing on some extras at the end for a full-on guitar wig-out/group hug. They may have up-staged the headliners, but in the pursuit of a good time, there were no hard feelings.