Music > Live Reviews
NEW NOISE! PRESENTS THE GOURDS, ALICE-LILY, SILHOUETTES & ORLO
Voodoo Daddy's Showroom
06/05/25
NEW NOISE! is a platform dedicated to nurturing and promoting young talent aged 14 to 25 in Norfolk and Suffolk. Presented by Pica Pica, Pica Pica!, Access Creative College, Play Produce Promote and Norfolk & Suffolk Music Hub, the NEW NOISE! evenings are great fun and great value - four acts for a fiver and some change - and feature a variety of styles from electronic and country to punk and grunge via nu-soul, hip-hop and more.
Tonight’s show at Voodoo’s opens with ORLO, My tastes in “electronic” music tends towards the darker (noisier?) side of things (Fuck Buttons) or the 90s/00s mainstream (Faithless, Leftfield, Massive Attack). So, I am clearly not an expert in or an aficionado of what Orlo does. I couldn’t even tell you if the songs he is playing are his own compositions. What I can say is that his set is well constructed, catchy and gets the crowd dancing and singing along. And he has an infectious enthusiasm that even gets me moving (as much as I ever do) and keeps me interested - which is more than can be said of sets I have seen by the likes of Haxan Cloak and The Orb...
SILHOUETTES are much more to my usual tastes. Musically, it is run of the mill grunge similar to stuff I have heard a thousand times before. There are big hints of Nirvana - more Bleach or In Utero than Nevermind - along with Dinosaur Jr and Pearl Jam. But that is not to take away from the fact that the duo can play. Blooming heck, can they play. Without wishing to be patronising, if they can do this now, on the day guitarist Harry is celebrating his 15th birthday, whilst drummer Rupert is 11, the future has to be very bright indeed. When they find their own sound and smooth out the occasionally awkward chord changes, the world may well be their oyster. Fierce, feral, promising.
I have seen ALICE-LILY before, at last year’s Wild Fields fest. That was Alice-Lily and guitarist Tom playing on the upper deck of the Climate Live bus. Tonight is a very different show. Alice-Lily sings and plays keys. Guitarist Tom is with her again and they’d joined by Teddy on sax, Jay on bass and Frazer on drums and keys. At the start of the set, the sound is a bit shonky, with the bass overpowering everything else but settles down as the set goes on. The nu-soul side of things is definitely not my bag but I can appreciate the talent of everyone on stage, with Alice-Lily herself having a great voice and magnetic stage persona. For me, things step up when they venture into ska, reggae and 2Tone territory but music is a very personal thing and, whether or not I like everything she does. Alice-Lily is pretty darned special.
GOURDS are also pretty darned special. This is the second time I have seen them. The first time was opening for (the mighty) Other Half and Feasts in Lowestoft back in February. They were pretty impressive then but have grown massively in the short time since. Most of the high energy set has Brian James-era Damned energy and attitude with a metallic edge and a touch of oi/streetpunk in the shoutalong choruses. That said, opener Cracktown-on-Sea adds dubby post-punk to the mix, Pheromones comes on like Motörhead covering The Undertones and I Love My Mummy is possibly the best Wonk Unit song Alex Wonk never wrote.
As great as Gourds can be, in the interests of trying to provide some constructive criticism, there are some question marks. She has a touch of Chelsea Dagger about it. Taco Truck Massacre doesn’t just have s touch of Chelsea Dagger about it, to these ears at least it IS Chelsea Dagger. Seagulls Get Fucked sounds too much like a Sham 69 outtake with a cod-reggae interlude. Oh, and I suspect that the band may regret Get Off My Dick in a year or so. Don’t get me wrong, I love almost all of what Gourds do and they have come a LONG way in the short time since I first saw them. There is more than a seed of greatness there and I really, really hope I get to see ‘em bring it to fruition.
The next NEW NOISE! will be on 10th June. Be there.