Little Comets @ Open
It’s all a little dull.
It’s become a rite of passage through the years for confused, hormonal pre-teens to see Little Comets at one point or another. Tonight is no different, as the queue outside OPEN consists almost exclusively of high schoolers awash with glitter. And, because of the venue’s policy whereby under-18s require an adult accomplice, there are mums and dads here too. The whole thing feels a bit like parents evening has run overtime. Tonight is going to be wild.
From Minneapolis, USA, Hippo Campus are main support. Image wise, they look as family friendly as you can get, nerdy but windswept with chunky glasses and boy-band hair. Musically? Catchy, like a cold, but also as common as one. They prompt little movement in the packed-out room with their mediocre indie numbers, and everything gets a little awkward when frontman Nathan Stocker instructs us to “Get your dancing shoes on! Or don’t, I don’t care”. The whole thing is slightly nauseating and feels like a noughties school disco, minus the panda pop. But the mums and dads loitering at the back seem to approve.
A few 80s bangers on the stereo later, Little Comets take to the stage. Since their last show locally (18 months or so ago at the Waterfront) they’ve had a line-up change, crowd-funded a record, and pretty much disappeared from the face of any radars of cultural relevance. Nonetheless, all frontman Rob Coles has to do is whip the classic One Night in October out of the bag, and we’re all reminded why we love this band. They’re quirky, they’re youthful, and most of all they know how to make people dance.
But from here onwards, it’s a downward slope. Newer material sounds stressed and uninteresting, causing the room to lose interest, the better-known stuff only just keeping the crowd’s attention. A Little Opus and Jennifer get the best reception. But it’s all a little dull. The stuffy club room at OPEN feels corporate and sterile, the screens at each end of the room distracting from the band onstage who are clearly giving it their all, and despite Coles’ opening statement that, “We like Norwich because people tend to listen more than care about jumping up and down”, it doesn’t seem like either will be happening much tonight.
Towards the end things do liven up, with the double whammy of Joanna and the iconic Dancing Song giving the crowd what they came for, before Effetism (from the band’s newest album, Hope Is Just a State of Mind) ends proceedings. It’s no gig of the century, but if catchy tunes and halfhearted sing-alongs are what you need, look no further than Little Comets.
