Having hitched himself a ride on the UK leg of the Los Angeles’ troubadour Hanni El Khatib’s Euro Summer tour, Brighton’s very own guitar man Theo Verney is clearly enjoying the journey. He blows into the Brudenell on a decidedly warm evening with a huge smile on his face and a glint in his eye, hellbent on doing dangerous battle with the humidity.
With his profile seriously raised by two triumphant shows in Liverpool last year – first at Sound City in the spring and then later in September at the International Festival of Psychedelia – Verney has used that springboard to produce his third and most compelling EP to date. Brain Disease was released earlier this month and it is to that recording he goes tonight in search of outer space with four of its essential songs.
‘Mountain Rose’ bristles with energy and determination; ‘Same Look In My Eye’ follows in its massive footsteps showing that Verney and his two musical cohorts can just as easily scratch the finest of melodies into the ironwork of their beautifully 
psyched-out noise. By the time the band reaches the EP’s gut-punching, monster title track they have blasted their way right past ‘Wake Me Softly’ (from Verney’s previous EP, 2013’s Heavy Sunn) and a memorably bruising encounter with ‘Sound Machine’ where Verney’s guitar dances madly between those of Tony Iommi and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke.
The band bid adieu with a seriously stoked ‘Endless Spiral’, a song that drinks at the watering hole of psychedelic blues. It contains a most demented guitar solo that could quite easily have been taken straight off Picturesque Matchstickable Messages from the Status Quo. In the heat of a balmy Tuesday night, Theo Verney creates colossal sine waves of guitar-heavy sound that are surely worthwhile to listen to in any circumstances.
Photo credit: Simon Godley
More pictures from this show are here.
Catch the last date of this tour at:
Birmingham’s Sunflower Lounge on 25th June.
Theo Verney also appears at Visions Festival in London on 8th August.
Brain Disease EP was released on 8th June 2015 via Mount Olympus/Wichita Recordings
