The 80s revival continues. Though if either of tonight’s acts were on the Rewind bill, they’d be in a far-flung corner of the country estate, beside the portaloos, miles from the country house main stage and the dulcet tones of Tony Hadley and Billy Ocean.
Fortunately, we’re instead in one of Edin… sorry, Leith’s newer, ‘cosier’ venues, very much in the style of the sweaty clubs that bands like tonight’s headliners are more used to.
And first on this nostalgia fest are Manc quartet Blue Orchids. Despite sporting just one original member – Fall founder Martin Bramah – they come with a good post-punk provenance, with one-time Ed Banger Chris Connelly on drums abetted by former A Witness bassist Vince Hunt, while the band’s sound wouldn’t be complete without keyboard wizardry provided by the hirsute John Paul Moran.
And perhaps more than anything else it’s a very Northern English feel the band evoke – especially in opener ‘Freak Show’, a hint of the Inspirals in the keyboard swirl, while drawled sardonic lyrics are redolent of both Half Man Half Biscuit and Bramah’s former sidekick Mark E Smith. They offer a Nightingales cover, but “in Blue Orchids style” (meaning that this writer can’t ID it) but more familiar are the swaggering ‘Diamond Age’, and ‘Crystal Kiss’, which is restarted – “it’s supposed to be tender,” says Bramah, as he has Connelly calm down the beat for a few minutes. The band do have new material on offer, but it’s ‘Bad Education’ that garners most cheers, alongside ‘Work’ which thrills at the tail end of a curtailed but still-lengthy set.
Like their guests, Nightingales similarly returned after a lengthy hiatus, but have in fact been recording in their reformed guise for more than a decade now. And yes, they have new material to punt, the EP ‘Become Not Becoming’ .
However, they kick off with oldie ‘Use Your Loaf’.
One hour later, they exit the tiny stage to tumultuous, pent-up applause.
What they deliver in-between is a frantic yet fluid 60 minutes of songs which meld into one another, leaving nary a gap for breath never mind audience cheers.
The set veers between glam stomp and post rock pomp, as much Beefheart as Buzzcocks… though more often the former.
The tighter-than four piece are held together by former Violet Violet drummer Fliss Kitson, with Andreas Schmid’s chundering bass and James Smith delivering scratchy, frantic guitar lines. All in support, of course, of founding member Robert Lloyd’s vocal gymnastics – still a commanding, black-suited presence after all these years, and still delivering acerbic wit on their new material as he was more than three decades years ago.
And that was that. 30 years in 60 minutes. Though on this form, it’ll not be the last we see of Lloyd and cohorts.
Also chief newshound at Jockrock
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