REVIEW: Last.FM Festival 2011

The Futureheads, Chapel Club, more play

Overall: 5/10 (festival score) 8/10 (gig score)

Stamping ‘festival’ on your gig doesn’t fool anyone. OK – so there are two stages. But they are 3,467 miles apart, and try as you might you won’t find a flight that gets you from London to New York between the closing notes of The Futureheads and the opening chords of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltson.

In reality this is a club night and nothing more. Especially given the transatlantic bill of Chapel Club, Tokyo Police Club, Two Door Cinema Club and Young Knives (originally Ponyclub). They only need S Club 7 [or more likely Bombay Bicycle Club, Ed.] for a full house!

That said, the NY show sold out days ago and by the end of the night The Forum is feeling close to capacity...so the organisers have clearly got something right.

Late additions, Bones (6/10) have amusingly been listed on the Last.FM website as being a hardcore punk-metal band from Sweden. Their fans will have been disappointed when a girl-fronted three-piece nu-wave act hits the stage.

We don’t know anything about Bones. Nor does Google and (as proven) neither does the Last.FM music search button. This is something of an achievement in its own right. Maybe if they play somewhere that the sound doesn’t give the impression it’s been filtered through a winter duvet it’ll be possible to assess whether or not they’ll be able to shake off this cloak of internet invisibility.

They’ll need more songs first though. ‘Too Hard To Say’ left the crowd too bored to care – although the final ‘Somebody Call The Police’ struggled out from under the muffled vocals with a fierce percussive twist.

Chapel Club (7.5/10) are a VF ‘one to watch’ for 2011 – much lauded as music’s great white hope and packing a suitcase full of slightly shoegazy anthems.

Squeezing seven tracks out of their relatively short set it’s unfortunate that the squelchy and indistinct mix combined with the band’s angular but somehow disjointed stage presence leaves the whole performance somewhat wanting. Whilst Lewis’ pent up charisma draws most of the attention there’s a lack of ‘connect’ with the rest of the band.

Which is a shame – because if you hark back to those halcyon days when Morrissey was at his peak and underrated acts like Kitchens of Distinction nagged at the heels of the charts then it’s bands like Chapel Club who offer up an antidote to a lot of today’s jelly-mould wonky-pop.

They’ve got the songs – now they need to find out who they are, what they’re for, and then tell the world.

Although playing second fiddle to tonight’s headliners, those most unlikely-looking pop stars Young Knives (8.5/10) are top dogs. The prog-rockesque opening chords of ‘Terra Firma’ launch them at the crowd and they immediately own the stage.

There’s hope yet for slightly aging, mildly overweight, wanna-be musicians with a dodgy taste in pullovers and faces made for Peep Show. Hope that is if you have a clutch of great songs and the ability to pick your way through a forest of guitar pedals with the nimbleness of a roe deer.

Tonight brings out a few new tunes, the standout of which is probably ‘Human Again’ – proof that the Dartnall brothers are still as sharp as ever on the song-writing front...if not the wardrobe department.

When it comes to formulaic spiky pop, then The Futureheads (7.5/10) are masters of the genre. The Last.FM playcounter keeps popping up on the big screens and shows them as being way out ahead of Young Knives and Chapel Club in terms of listens on the online station. They play through five of the 13 singles that have marked their career since 2004 – the earliest of which is 'Decent Days And Nights’ and the most recent last April’s ‘Heartbeat Song’. They round off the night with the perennial crowd-pleaser, ‘Hounds of Love’.

It’s a predictably well-received set, littered with the polished stage antics and punctuated by excited crowd cheers. Music for the masses - delivering at least three of your five-a-day in a familiar and easily digestible format.

Now where’s that campsite?

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