The Slow Readers Club
The Slow Readers Club may have cornered the Indie electro doom pop market, such as it is, but they’ve been clearly influenced by some of the finest acts of the last century, mixing up a cocktail of sounds in a way that is both discriminating and imaginative.
Around about this time last year, I saw the Slow Readers Club at the Arts Centre, and confidently predicted a swift ascendancy for a band that, notwithstanding a solid following in their home town of Manchester, had remained not nearly as big as they should be. I remember thinking they would need a bigger venue next time round, so for this year’s outing Open seemed entirely in keeping with the huge fan base I imagined they now had. I was therefore frankly gobsmacked, having turned up at a suspiciously quiet entrance to the venue, to be redirected away from the cavernous Banking Hall, and into the tiny Club. It would seem that international fame and fortune is still a fair way off – midway through the set frontman Aaron Starkie mentioned in passing that this was their first year as a full time band – and that’s a sobering thought for a group brimming with so much talent.
I wasn’t the only one that looked to be struggling with the venue. Support band Bridges had been squeezed onto what little space was left on stage, so that the noise from the drums knocked out pretty much everything else if you were anywhere close to right of centre. It was one of many things wrong with the sound that ill served their performance, and though I wandered around the increasingly claustrophobic venue trying to find a sweet spot from which I could give them a fair hearing, it was not with any real success. Along the way, there were some decent tunes fighting against the elements – the National and British Sea Power both came to mind - and any band brave enough to name check the terminally unfashionable Snow Patrol deserves a salute for swimming against the tide. I think it significant that the crowd were supportive, rather than enthusiastic – I don’t think I was the only who suspected they are a much better band than the one we got to hear on the night.
The Reee-derrrs, as a group of committed fans down the front insisted on chanting between every ruddy song, have been plugging away for a few years now, and always seem genuinely flattered and touchingly grateful that folk have stuck their hands in the pockets. While they may not yet be able to fill upstairs, there could certainly have done with a bigger room for a fan base that seemed to know every word of every song. Their appearance on stage had been prefaced by Donna Summer, which seemed an odd way to start things off, but a few songs in and it sort of made sense. The Slow Readers Club may have cornered the Indie electro doom pop market, such as it is, but they’ve been clearly influenced by some of the finest acts of the last century, mixing up a cocktail of sounds in a way that is both discriminating and imaginative.
For those of us with a mental play list that goes back far enough to notice, there were snatches of Blondie in Kurtis Starkie’s exquisite nimble-fingered guitar work, while the drum and bass of James Ryan and David Whitworth harkened back to the insistent thump of Joy Division. Gifted with an extraordinary range, Aaron Starkie’s heavenly vocals called to mind Andy Bell or Jimmy Sommerville, while there was even - Lord help us - shades of Flocks of Seagulls in there somewhere. The band managed to boil down all these influences and produce a mighty sound entirely their own, as they cherry picked from their back catalogue, but otherwise played a healthy chunk from last year’s Build a Tower. The Readers have an almost infuriating knack for turning out one earworm after another, from the opening new song Lunatic, through set favourites Cavalcade, Sirens, and Feet on Fire. Egged on by an appreciative audience that went from sixteen (the two kids behind me for whom this was their first gig) to sixty (bloke I met at the bar) these were proper fans, worshipping at the temple of a band loved by the few rather than liked by the many, which is surely the way round it should be.
What a shame, then, their set came to such a swift and abrupt end. When Starkie announced they were going to finish with the single On The TV, it was a well-received announcement - it’s a worthy addition to the canon – but the applause that followed was the sort of noise made by an audience keeping their powder dry for the big finish to come. Sadly, it was not to be, as afterwards the lights went up, leaving a somewhat perplexed crowd to work out that it really was all over. Encores are tiresome - we all know that - but if you’re going to finish your main set in a little over an hour, I think the audience has every right to calibrate their expectations accordingly. Unimpressed with Starkie’s promise to hang around by the merchandise stall, the crowd instead wandered out into the night - judging by the chatter I overheard, many of them felt short changed and underwhelmed. What a pity.
