Gurriers
GURRIERS hit the stage hard, playing eighteen songs in 80 minutes.
Pavlis
It is down to the Waterfront for an evening of contemporary post-punk.
Dutch five piece TRAMHAUS open proceedings in very fine style. Vocalist Lukas Jansen – looking kinda like Chris Ramsey channelling Mike Bubbins – leaps about like the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof. The rest of the band are more reserved but make a glorious racket. Twin guitarists Nadya van Osnabrugge and Micha Zest pull off the impressive feat of combining Geordie Walker-style post-punk stylings with NY no-wave skronk. Julia Vroeghe’s bass combines early PiL dub with early Sisters spaciness. Jim Luijtens’ drumming is some of the most impressive I have seen this year. Formidable stuff and (yet) another band to add to the list of great Dutch bands.
Taking their name from a derogatory Irish English slang term, the politest meaning of which is lout, GURRIERS hit the stage hard, playing eighteen songs in 80 minutes. It is perhaps lazy to compare them to their countrymen Fontaines DC and The Murder Capital but that doesn’t mean the comparisons are unfounded. Idles, early Banshees, Dry Cleaning (musically if not vocally) and maybe a bit of PiL are also in the mix.
The lighting is best described as atmospheric. The stage is in near darkness for a fair portion of the set, which is not ideal when Pierce O'Callaghan’s kick drum pedal needs fixing not once but twice and means vocalist Dan Hoff’s scissor kicks and Charlie McCarthy’s safety-pin embellished dress are wasted on all but the front row or two. It does however lend the performance a moody ambience entirely in keeping with the music and makes it all the more exciting when Hoff wades into the crowd.
The audience is a mix of the young, for whom this is probably all new, and the oldies who have seen this all before. The crowd (or at least those around me) clearly adore Gurriers but, as good as they are, it is Tramhaus that do the most for me.
