Vanilla Nightmare @ Hitchin Club 85, Wed 23rd Feb 2005
The first night by the ‘Disco Dollz’ promoters has been a bit of an odd one: “music to dance to” seems to be their raison d’etre, which includes both the justified rock-club classics and the kind of indie-cool semi-nothingness peddled by the likes of the Killers and Razorlight – and those boys Flowers and Borell sometimes do it well with their fist-shaking anthems, but do so many bands have to copy them in sound and style? Not only does their music come out deathly dull, but these imitators could do with doing more on stage, instead of just standing around – even just shaking your fist, like a Razor Killer, would liven things up a little bit... and I'm already sick of all these new bands who are a little bit "funky" like Franz, or just a little bit "emotional", it's as poor as all those mid-'90s bands who claimed to be "a bit dance"... I want to see a band who concentrate on being just a bit good.
So there’s a couple of copyist bands tonight who sap my will to live, and one group in between that, in their own modest way, are quite life-affirming – Black Ramps, see their CD here – then there’s a headlining set by this newish three-piece, Vanilla Nightmare.
"Igloo versus Big Day Out!"
shouts Mark Smith, lanky bridge between both those great, defunct bands.
BDO crafted classic guitar pop with a comedy edge, while Igloo played
a wholly different kind of indie-dance music. Vanilla Nightmare, with
members of both, are somewhere in between. Their gigging experience
shows in their confidence, Mark at one point climbing onto the bassist,
the pair collapsing and leaving Chris to ably fill in on the drums.
“Drummers always have the last word, don’t they?”
Mark jokes in another piece of on-stage banter. Cue that famous post-punchline
"dur-dum-schh" (!)
If there's a problem here, it's that
just this mix of jokey shouting and drumming seems to be the crux of
their sound. The band have the performance aspect of their set down
perfectly, but the songs, so far, have a sameyness which disappoints.
Apart from the “money” song, which benefits from a rowdy
backing vocal, all of Mark’s lyrics seem to mention his heart
and/or soul, which is hardly the stuff of uncharted waters in Rock.
Ground-breaking poetry is probably not the goal of such chaotic players,
but a little more variety would help the songs to stand out on their
own. Maybe the sound was just a bit muddy tonight, but I couldn’t
hear much of the tuneful cheese / chocolate-filled frills that Mark’s
music used to be famous for. Then again, there were coincidental reminders
of the Breeders at their most basic and raw on their 'Title Tk' album,
and the request to "burn my head on fire," which as
Mark admitted in another entertaining speech, doesn't make sense at
all, and they don't care. But it does have a good beat, and you can
dance to it alright...
...and it's good to watch. I'll watch them again! Maybe they'll have some more new songs, and maybe the support bands (like locals Fall to the Sky) will all have started sounding more like the Mars Volta than bland emo-pop. And maybe I'll be in a better mood.
It's great, at the end of the day, when new people are getting into new things. Attraction / action / reaction. It's just too easy to get bored of watching the process. So Franz Ferdinand, so far as their dancefloor filler and art-school cool, might be the new early Blur, and Kaiser Chiefs the new Supergrass; the Killers are the new Bluetones -they even look like them!- and that Libertines are (or were), of course, the new Old Manics / Suede / Menswear. Those who've heard it all before should at least hear a few new tunes. And if it all brings forth a new wave of interest in guitar-led bands, we can look forward to the next inventive label in the vein of Chemikal Underground / Jeepster / whatever. And I'll wake up at the next Vanilla Nightmare. "Dur-dum-schh" (!)
