If this review was to have been a sandwich – the nourishing slices of bread being Tom Stock and Wet Paint, with Welsh four piece The Muscle Club in the vital role of the oh-so-tasty filling. But the best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang, as you’ve probably noticed yourself, aft agley, with my carefully crafted metaphor getting bent irrevocably out of shape by a barmaid’s confident assurance that the gigs never start before nine. ‘Oh really,’ he said, voice laden with sadly retrospective sarcasm, ‘Izzatso?’ Well, goddamn my loathsome tardiness, because a subsequent visit to the internets reveals Tom Stock to be indie guitar strummery draped with surprisingly delicate estuary-tinged vocals; nothing earth shattering, but a pretty fine start to an evening.
The other slice of bread in this – I guess now open-faced – sandwich was a more rocked-up outfit by the name of Wet Pain; three bearded guitar-wielders and a zebra dress wearing girl on drums. While songs such as ‘Hug It Out’ showed off Wet Paint’s grunge colours, there was something distinctly homegrown – Britpop even – about ‘Don’t Shave’ and the rather excellent ‘It Rots’. Kudos also to the bassist who spent much of the set with his back to the audience à la Mark E. Smith, giving my plus one, The Blonde Midfielder, ample time to study his half-uncovered boxers.
Even for the BM, however, the night’s main attraction was undoubtedly The Muscle Club, and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to report that the Welsh lads were stone cold awesome. Playing songs from their upcoming EP ‘Fragmented Ideas From Young Lungs’ plus a few new ‘uns, The Muscle Club sound an awful lot like fellow Cardiffistas Los Campesinos. There’s even a similarity in song naming, with the kick-ass catchy ‘Alright! Okay! You win!’ echoing the latter’s ‘You! Me! Dancing!’. But to write vocalist Michael Bateson-Hill, guitarist Matthew Hitt, bassist Ceri Jones and drummer Jordan Hayward off as Los C. wannabes would be drenched in wrong – tunes like ‘Damn These Circumstances’, ‘Be Glad You’re Neurotic’, ‘Hail Joe Hale’ and ‘Ithaca’ are more than capable of standing on their own two feet.
It’s always a good sign when you have that ‘I wish they’d played one more’ feeling, and it was present in spades at the Old Blue Last. They must be putting something in the water in Cardiff these days
