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Review: Home Counties, Rough Trade – ‘Charm, angst and punk excitement’
Bristol’s Rough Trade opened its doors to a brand new age of post-punk pop on Saturday, showcasing two bands who hold an unabashed sense of truth in cultural standpoint, visceral musicality and demand for sheer fun.
My First Time and Home Counties are certainly the powerhouse bands of this next wave of upcoming artists, unique and incomparable.
Supporting Home Counties on the beginning of their UK Tour, Bristol-based four-piece My First Time began the night with an immense set. They sit somewhere between the Strokes, Wet Leg, the Streets and Black Midi with impressive features on BBC 1, BBC 6 Music and Submarine Cat Records.
Frontman Issac Stroud-Allen leads the crowd into a trance from the get-go, shouting politics, social media stereotypes and nightlife from the centre of the crowd to onstage with a mic lead wrapped around his body – like something from a Ziggy Stardust live show.
His ability to balance teenage angst and witty sarcasm is truly on another level, let loose across Rough Trade’s compact event space as if his school playground, his pulpit and his protest streets all in one.
The entire band are truly electric: unforgiving live drum beats and razor-sharp guitar riffs are as chilling as on their recordings, from new unreleased material to their first single Wind Up Merchant.
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It is contemporary bands like My First Time, Yard Act and Geese who have mastered how to forge a sound, organic and unpredictable, both in recording and performance. It is a refreshing wave against the modern pop scene as it becomes increasingly palatable and congruous.
My First Time are the exemplar of a new wave of music on the horizon; one that is charging onto the scene with youth, energy, rowdiness and a readiness to be heard. The band shimmers with anticipation and screams for a bigger stage.
Returning to Bristol with their second album Humdrum, Home Counties took to the stage with passion and excitement to showcase their sound, self-defined as ‘a sharp, dance driven evolution produced by Al Doyle of LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip’.
What’s immediately striking is their amazing range of musicality, with every member lending a hand in all areas of singing, rapping, instrumentation and percussion to create their signature complex sound.
The guitar lines especially are fabulously balanced between two electric guitars, one crisp, punchy and satisfying and the other casting more atmospheric shadows over their poignant lyricism.
They certainly also know how to jampack a set with every genre, from samba tunes to earworm dance beats to acoustic pondering, keeping the audience restless for the band’s next steps.
Dual vocalists Will Harrison and Lois Kelly welcome the audience to engage with their exposure of the chaos of the modern world, clearly loving every second of their time on stage.
The crowd clearly enjoy their witty precision and classic club beats, and follow the band’s journey across a fabulous set list – even with a couple of small technical hitches along the way which were well handled and quickly resolved.
It seems appropriate to note that tonight is the opening gig of their UK Tour, perhaps explaining a perceived lack of self-confidence in their sound, lying muddled between indie, pop and dance.
Unlike My First Time who appear so certain of what and who they are, Home Counties were perhaps treading a tad too cautiously in their performance, and there’s hope they will find their groove as the tour progresses and their experience grows.
Playing alongside a looped drumbeat on track may have contribute to a loss of the live sense of experimentalism that gives the audience an unwavering, constant sound to lose themselves in.
But overall, after a couple hours of vibrant politics, thrashing guitars and uncontainable dancing, both My First Time and Home Counties hit the ground running on the opening of their tour with a gig oozing in charm, angst and punk excitement.
These are two bands to keep eyes keenly fixed upon over the next months as their tour flourishes across the UK.
All images: Poppy Beresford
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