Live Review
Slow Club – Barfly. Liverpool
Twee indie pop can be hard to get into. Fixated with the technical performance, sometimes to the detriment of the actual song, bands of this ilk can get carried away with their own brilliance and mastery. Revelling in the knowledge that they are producing something that the average bedroom player won’t be able to download the guitar tabs to and play themselves. Bravo.
Slow Club are not like this. With only a guitar, some percussion and complimentary boy/girl vocals the imagination would have to work overtime in arranging these little sonnets and ditties into something more than what they are – superb, sweet and sometimes soppy daydreams translated into music.
So if they are not part of this jerky time change movement why did you bring it up Mat you idiot? Well they are part of that pop scene, but they have remembered that the song is more important than the showcase in technical genius. The songs are stripped down to their basic elements but are no less, and often more, engaging than bigger line-ups with more complicated arrangement.
Live they are delightfully bon-homie, and having seats to sit there and grin along to the songs would be perfection. But even standing there listening to mostly unknown tracks I am engaged. None more so than when they do away with the conventions of electric and play unplugged renditions; the first time during a PA problem and the planned second time to end the set with ‘When I Go’; this time entering the crowd as wandering minstrels – which they are a modern day version of.
It’s all good sweet fun anyway – you can feel the love in the room and for a brief moment my innate hatred of hippies is gone; soon to be returned though once I return to the bar and find no white wine available.