Lemonparty Presents: three months in (that’s a quarter of a year), and I reckon this gig series is becoming a local institution. This time out the genre is indie, and the standard is consistently high across all three acts. In fact this month’s offering had the highest standard of playing overall, although for me it was probably a bit less musically interesting than the previous two nights. However, there’s a sizeable audience out there for whom tonight’s style would be preferable. It’s a challenge to keep finding bands for a night like this, despite the large number that are out there. Getting acts that can play on the night you need, in the right genre, to a reasonable standard takes some serious work, and Lemonparty deserve a lot of credit for keeping this night rolling. It’s things like this that make a local scene, and if you live anywhere near Sudbury (Suffolk) you should get out and support it.
Sarah Hunt (acoustic)
Opening for a couple of fairly noisy guitar bands is the sort of situation singer-songwriters frequently find themselves in, by virtue of the (not unjustified) conventional wisdom that dynamics should build through the evening. It doesn’t make for an attentive crowd, and a solo, self-accompanied singer really benefits from an attentive crowd. It’s understandable if people who are out to see a noisy guitar band don’t want to stand in silent, rapt attention, but I was ready to throttle a couple of audience members who stood directly in front of Sarah Hunt with their backs to her, and chatted loudly through her performance.
She rose to the challenge in the best possible way, by blasting out an unignorable rendition of Piece Of My Heart. She took her cue from the Joplin recording, rather than Emma Franklin’s original release: I grew up with that track, so I had high expectations. Luckily Sarah Hunt’s lungs and technique are well up to the challenge: she can nail a tricky scalar melisma, and has a powerful voice, that is also quite girlish and vulnerable. Occasionally, at the very top of her range, and at maximum volume, she can sound a bit shrill, but on the whole her delivery is mellifluous and ear-pleasing.
Having got the audience’s attention, I’d like to say she retained it with her mixed set of covers and originals, but they weren’t really all in the mood. She did what she could though, chatting naturally and getting some singalong action with tunes like True Colors (as an old 80s punk I will never be able to like that song, but it did the trick!) She’s a good singer, a good performer, and commands the stage with a friendly and engaging persona.
Never Ending Lights (indie rock)
Neverending Lights play melodic indie guitar pop. As often happens with bands in their genre the temptations of live performance put some crunch in their guitars that I suspect would be absent in a studio recording, but to my mind their sound was all the better for it. They had their instrumental sounds together, and played a tight entertaining set, with good dynamics and enough of a range of feels to keep things interesting. They are engaging and enthusiastic performers, and kept the audience nicely hyped.
Aside from a slight tendency to become a bit rhythmically ragged around funkier grooves, there’s not much wrong with this band, but I would like to see them put something a bit more distinctive into their sound. Either some leftfield ideas in their songwriting, or some more creative sonic manipulations could go a long way in making them stand out from the crowd. I never have a problem with bands choosing to work within a particular genre, but to stick in the memory they need to make the generic conventions their own, and do something arresting with them. So, a little bit generic, but a good, committed and entertaining set.
Stoney Road (indie rock)
Stoney Road take a similar approach to Neverending Lights, but with a stronger dose of rock, and their playing is at another level in terms of crisp, tight time feels and dynamic control. They’re all pretty accomplished technicians, but it’s the drummer who had the most chance to showcase his chops, and yes, he’s really got some!
Their singer was basically bursting at the seams with energy and passion, putting everything he had into every note he sang. It’s the kind of investment in the performance that gets me instantly on-side: it’s no easy matter to put yourself on the line for an audience like that, and I always appreciate it. Having a good voice helps as well, which he does. The audience was apparently largely drawn by Neverending Lights, so it had thinned out for Stoney Road’s set, and it was much harder work for the headliners, but their singer never let up with the audience interaction, which was conducted with an eagerness to please, and a modesty, that would be very hard to dislike.
Their set was peppered with covers, mostly from well within the compass of indie rock, but their penultimate tune was Play That Funky Music, which got the audience moving, and got the band grooving at their tightest. Quite ironic really, as that’s also what the song did for Wild Cherry, who were primarily a hard rock band, in the disco era.
Stoney Road are a tight, well schooled band, with an unpretentious, no-nonsense approach to crowd pleasing entertainment. It would be good to see them play to a more responsive, and larger audience, because it takes a certain critical mass to really develop a buzz: these boys are a top class party band, and I’m willing to bet they would have mosts crowds in the palm of their hands.
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