Live Review

The Vaselines – The Static Gallery, Liverpool

• 23rd Sep 2010

With The Static Gallery being such a cute artsy venue, its intimate surroundings are just perfect for alternative and fringe artists like Haight-Ashbury and headliners The Vaselines. In fact its probably the first time both bands have ever played in Liverpool. Believe me if you like smoke machines you would’ve loved the place, because some bright spark decided to keep one chugging away the whole night.

Taking up the first support slot were home-grown talent Liberty Vessels, whose singer had an impressively rich and powerful voice. Despite their slightly crap name, as well as some technical errors, Liberty Vessels put on a good show and appeared to enjoy themselves. From time to time they’d speak to the audience, there was movement there and they appeared to pleasant enough. Unfortunately as is often the case with openers, most people were at the bar during their set so missed out on the band’s full potential! Hopefully they’ll stick around for a while and make something of themselves.

Following this bizarre Glaswegian three-piece, Haight-Ashbury, dressed like Romanian peasants, awkwardly made their way onto the stage. The guitarist especially, Scott James, had worked hard on sewing coloured patches onto his trousers. Maybe not the look they were intending, but still, it is obvious this band are dedicated to the peace and love side of music. In true Ramones style each member has even gone as far as changing their surname to ‘Ashbury’, their band name having been derived from the Haight-Ashbury hippy district in California. They began with the song ‘Freeman Town’, met by the audience with what came across to me as curiosity. Haight-Ashbury’s set up was novel: shared vocal duties between the two women, with Kirsty Heather on bass and Jennifer on minimal drums, and sometimes the bass was put down entirely. The whole thing sounded like the monotonous chanting drone of a pagan cult – for some reason you couldn’t help but stare at them mindlessly in morbid fascination.

Scott James certainly had his fair share of ‘weird’ guitars, happily swapping them round for every number and overloading them with distortion. Although initially the music inspired some tribal dance moves on the front row the novelty wore off fairly soon. The repetitive beating of the drum was particularly grating, as well as the dull predictable bass lines, and the nerve-induced rigidity on stage was almost impossible to ignore. I was beginning to empathise and feel uneasy myself. One track called ‘Mother’s Ruin’, that endorses grunge-like bloated distortion yet again, trails off with the line; “Mother’s little helper is mother’s ruin/She don’t know what she’s doing”. To be honest this euphemism for speed is clichéd, cringey and outdated, surely there are more tasteful ways to pay tribute to the bygone 60s and 70s?

Oddly enough The Vaselines were the only act that didn’t require you to endure painful feedback between EVERY SINGLE song (do you get the hint Mr. Sound Man?). They arrived confidently, veterans to all this business, and kicked straight into ‘Oliver Twisted’. With tight musicianship, banter with the crowd and each other, the whole performance was of effortless second nature to Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly. Worth noting was Frances’ metaphorical story about a pussy cat hiding under the floorboards, which was apparently the cause for The Vaselines’ past split, and also marked the start of ‘Monster Pussy’. There was much approval from the Nirvana fans in the crowd when tracks like ‘Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam’ were dropped in, and to conclude The Vaselines relished a pretty packed turn-out of enthusiastic gig-goers.

Haight-Ashbury could use their unusual approach to their advantage, however instead choose to go down the predictable route of half-assed imitation and gimmicky costumes. It’s enough to get them the occasional gig through the year, but if they fail to even remotely adapt somewhat to 2010, then being on the BBC 6 Playlist a couple of times is the best they can expect to achieve.