Phoning it in

Dispatches from the back of the venue

RIYL: Joy Division

  • Dog Race & Flip Top Head

    Dog Race & Flip Top Head

    The silly season is coming to and end and darker nights means back rooms and basements are coming alive with music once again. Autumn 2025 kicks off with a double bill of encouragingly strange new sounds.

    First up is Flip Top Head from Brighton. They’re a 6 piece, crammed onto the small stage with keyboards, violin and guitars plus a deputising bassist drafted in having only rehearsed earlier that day not that you’d know it, such is the confidence with which the songs are attacked.

    There’s no obvious focal point – singer Bowie Bartlett (nominative determinism alert) is tucked away behind the PA but has an excellent, soaring voice as a counterpoint to the other singer Bertie who leans into the dreaded ‘Sprechgesang’ spoken word thing but not to the point where we’re looking at another Sleaford Yard Cleaners D.C. – far from it.

    The mix of soaraway and spoken is just right and musically things are an enjoyably disorientating mix of jazzy, folky, avant rock but with plenty of musical anchors and hooks to keep you interested. I like ’em.

    Headlining tonight are Dog Race. Early days for them but it’s a sell out show and there’s a definite buzz in the air. The band file on – I’m still getting used to the fact that Paul Calf moustaches, mullets and clobber last seen on Limahl from Kajagoogoo in 1983 are in vogue again but preferable to Library-hater Liam Gallagher and his fucking designer anorak gurning at me from billboards. Unlike the support, Dog Race have a very definite focal point in singer Katie Healy. Her voice, rising from deep and guttural, to screamy to an almost operatic warble is quite something. I hear a hint of Billy Mackenzie, Anohni/Anthony, and maybe going way back Lene Lovich. It lifts Dog Race sky high above the standard 2025 Indie competition – and although Healy is not exactly throwing shapes she puts in a completely gripping performance.

    Musically things are more conventional – bass driven, synth and guitar. The Cure, Joy Division, Soft Cell, Bauhaus…so far, so 4AD. The vocals take us to some uncanny spaces and the music needs to follow it – and sure enough there is an unnamed new song – written days earlier – where the band hang back and Healy plays solo on keys and we can hear the unconventional intonation and tone she can conjur up before she steps away and things explode. There’s something happening here. Quietly charismatic, unsettling and wonderfully gothic but in a very 2025 way rather than a retro 80s way – and there is some serious frugging and grooving going on in the audience.

    Darkness you can dance to.

  • eat-girls

    eat-girls

    This is my first gig at the former (infamous) Old Mother Macs pub, now relaunched as The Rat and Pigeon. It’s still very much an old school backstreet boozer but with enough of a facelift to make it feel friendly enough and the youthful clientele challenge the myth that ‘ver kids’ don’t like clustering around a pub table for a chinwag, a bag of crisps and a pint of mild… these lot do.

    Upstairs is a very small but well appointed gig venue, about the size of the back room of The Castle but with space for a corner bar and back room…and it has a sound and lighting rig powerful enough for a venue three times the size. Small enough for local artists and international bands taking their first steps on the circuit  – and indeed tonight’s turn is French trio eat-girls (the lower case and hyphen is important apparently), over from Lyon for their first ever UK dates.

    They start by donning those head-light things joggers wear to illuminate each member of the band and the audience – it’s a neat trick and straight away they grab your attention. The striking three piece Amélie, Elisa, and Maxence play keys, guitar and bass with everyone covering vocals – often the track drops away to them all singing in unison – their “electronic madrigals” as they put it. There’s no drummer but the backing track is punchy enough and the propulsive bass and guitars provides enough movement, spontaneity and energy to compensate for the relentless, pre-programmed beatbox. 

    I don’t want to resort to that old hackery of comparing these young artists to other, older bands but I’m going to anyway. There’s definitely an echo of early Stereolab in the taught rhythms, vocal rounds and a certain sense of utilitarian style. They draw from Post-Punk, particularly the clipped, economical tunesmithery of Wire, The Banshees and Joy Division at their most motorised. The organ drones and keyboards recall the dreamily European, cinematic swoon of Tuxedomoon or Marine.

    But enough of the comparisons – eat-girls have plenty of ideas of their own with moody synth textures and atmospheric samples and dubby FX adding to a swirly miasma. You can dance to them too – and they inspire some serious frugging in the room among the pop-crazed youngsters as the room fills and warms up. They have a deft knack of veering from total seriousness, to bopping around with abandon- often during the same song. 

    I’m totally sold on these – easily one of the best new groups I’ve seen in a long time. Their mighty fine LP ‘Area Silenzio’ is out now and don’t miss the chance to see eat-girls.

    They will haunt you. 

    https://eat-girls.bandcamp.com/album/area-silenzio