It’s a case of ‘better late than never’ tonight, as this evening’s entertainment was meant to occur late last year. However, it was postponed as Loose Articles were keen to include tonight’s venue in their Kick Like A Girl: Extra Time! tour, which is not just the usual tour promoting their debut album – last year’s corking Scream If You Wanna Go Faster. It is much more than that.
It’s a series of gigs aimed at supporting young female/non- binary people into live music across a range of areas, from performance to sound and technical roles. They are working with grass-roots music
venues in places that are often overlooked on the mainstream touring circuits, where the band will provide opportunities for participants to shadow them and their crew during setting up and sound-checking. Following this they will then be able to ask Loose Articles and their tech any questions they may have. It also gives them opportunities to support (if they are musical) as well as free entry to the gig, which to this reviewer’s eyes makes them very good eggs indeed.
And speaking of support slots, we are here sufficiently early tonight to catch both of them, starting with the splendidly be-hatted Oorya (pronounced Who Are Ya?), and they give us something of a rarity this evening, an opening act that has a crowd so enraptured into silence that you could hear a pin drop. This is especially impressive as it comes in the form of a brand new, never played before, acoustic-led song, which comes just after a Benefits-esque ranting banger and shows a hell of a range. Their between song chat is different class too, especially when they introduce the “rest of the band”, which pretty much consists of Eon The Emotional Support Dinosaur (yes, really, it’s a small plastic toy). The set ends with Oorya coming offstage and having the crowd encircle them with another captivating number that cements tonight as one of the most interesting half hours that I have seen in a long time.
Second support, Tits Up seem to suffer initially from the visceral thrill that’s just gone before, and both they and the crowd seem to be a bit flat, a bit ‘after the Lord Mayors show’ as their more conventional tunes don’t quite hit home at first. However, as their half hour progresses and their song influences become stranger (cannibals, rats and cheese to name but three), both us and them seem to relax into it and unfortunately they just seem to be hitting their stride when it’s time for them to go. On another night they will tear a roof off.
Loose Articles have famously widened their fanbase since they supported Foo Fighters at Old Trafford last year, (a time when Dave Grohl was still the nicest man in rock), and there’s quite the age range in attendance tonight, which could be due to the ticket prices (it’s only a fiver to get in, it’s cheaper than a pint), and there’s time in between acts to ponder why more bands don’t try things like this. It’s such a busy room tonight, whilst there are bands on a similar level to Loose Articles who are playing the same type of venues, but charging £15-20 and playing to empty rooms.
Pondering over, the clock strikes 10, and Loose Articles kick off with the album opener ‘Mr Manager’ and a thrashing version of 2021 single ‘Buses’, and it’s obvious that in the fifteen months since we last saw them live they have become a beefier live prospect than they were, with all the time spent on the road helping them to hone and amplify their noise. ‘Sinead Loves Bitcoin’ is so heavy that it’s almost unrecognisable, whereas ‘Want’ sees them adding a layer of groove.
The one time illegalities of pinball leads us into the stomping album track ‘Pinball John’, before there’s the first proper mosh of the night for both ‘Kick Like A Girl’ and ‘Are You A Welder?’, which is dedicated to “all the butt-cracks in the crowd”.
The night takes a Latin turn with ‘Unpaid Intern’ turning into a cowbell-driven Brazillian dance anthem, before the band lead the crowd into joining them in an off stage limbo competition. It’s that kind of fun evening. Album highlight ‘It’s Art’, with it’s retort-to-sexism chant of “it’s not my fella’s guitar, it’s my funky guitar”, leads seamlessly into album closer and recent single ‘Guitars, Cars, Knickers and Bras’, before the last hoedown of the night in the form of ‘I’d Rather Have A Beer’.
Tonight has served us well on a number of things – an advert for cheap gigs, a showcase for up-and-coming supports, and, most of all, a victory lap celebration of a great debut album by a splendid live act. It is a perfect Friday night out.
