Blood On The Wall

This is what I want in an opening act, a band bowling from the lane of the unexpected and scattering my senses like pins demolished by a fiery ball of molten metal. I want aggression and attitude, the feeling in my gut that this band could blow the cobwebs from my scepticism with this country’s punk scene, one stuffed with innumerable so-so acts unlikely to ever mean anything; I want to be moved to scream “Yeeeaaaarrrggghhh” come the climax of songs I’m hearing for the first time. I want to feel my heart beat in time to a hammered bass guitar and for my stomach to lurch an inch left and two right whenever vocalist and guitarist collide on stage, spinning apart and flailing wildly into another song full of fuck-yous and told-you-sos. I want to shake my too-long hair ‘til split ends are in my mouth and in my Guinness; I want to grab the nearest guy and French kiss him hard, feeling another mouth dried through dancing vigorously to something wholly unexpected but instantaneously remarkable.

I don’t ask for much, but Lovvers serve up all of the above and more. The Nottinghamshire quartet, comprised of splinters and slivers of bands better known but less immediately impressive, play as if they’re headlining tonight’s show; they play like this is their last show, their first show, their only show; they play like their very lives depend on twisting their audience’s insides into knots and forcing them to buckle and break, each sunken attendee loving every minute of the pain. This is the same bubbling urge to convulse myself into a sweaty heap I felt when Wives unleashed their primal punk onto the front row of a Brixton Windmill crowd sometime last year; it’s a similar sensation to the brilliant euphoria that washed over me when Aaron North refused to leave the Astoria stage when his red-and-black-clad LA gang were playing second fiddle, wrongly, to Rival Schools. I want it over and over and over, and come Lovvers’ final song, their parting shot of bile and brutality, I rush straight to the merchandise to purchase a demo. It’s an almost unprecedented act.

Such an impressive opening leaves Blood On The Wall in a pain-in-the-arse situation: a good half of tonight’s crowd is in for them, yet half of that half are deafened and the other’s wondering if they’ve not just witnessed the night’s highlight. The Brooklyn trio plough through a selection of sludgy stoner-rockers and a handful of Pixies-lite numbers with a middling level of success. When they strike with speed, delivering doses of fuzzy indie-rock in less than two minutes, attentions are held and toes are tapped; when they ditch the streamlined approach for drawn-out songs held together by repetitive riffs, many eyes begin to turn towards the bar and thoughts switch from rocking to supping another frothy pint. ‘I’d Like To Take You Out Tonight’ is one such number: although its presence on the band’s recommended Awesomer long-player is welcomed as if offers respite from chunky riffs and wayward yelps, tonight it’s flaccid and forgettable. The same can be said of ‘Mary Susan’. They have their moments, for sure, but when sandwiched between two acts exuding energy like suns going supernova, Blood On The Wall unfortunately fail to muster up a memorable set. Tonight’s their first-ever London show, though; future performances, alongside wholly different acts, are sure to be better received.

The evening’s actual headliners, xbxrx (also playing their first London show), emerge to a slightly depleted crowd; although I’m fairly far from overwhelmed by Blood On The Wall’s encore-capped set (aren’t support acts meant to ignore such requests?), clearly a good percentage of ticket-holders are so non-plussed by the Californian quartet’s jerky rhythms and coarse vocals that they’ve bailed without so much as bearing witness to a single song. It’s their loss, and a massive one: xbxrx are all-smiling rock ‘n’ rollin’ punk fun, bouncing and clapping and tossing balloons this way and that; their singer springs from his standing spot repeatedly, forever threatening to bring the mirror ball above the stage crashing to the floor, showering the dancing many with shards of glittering glass. They’re dervishes of death-ray riot-rock, spraying their lyrics like bullets and treating their instruments like replaceable play things, like Playd’oh trinkets baked hard and ready to pound into crumbs.

“This one you may have heard on a website called MySpace,” splutters the bouncing pillar of perspiration, his bandmates decked out in matching uniforms a la Devo, albeit while only echoing Mothersbaugh and company if they’d been jacked into the mains during a lightning storm. Touchstones are apparent – The Blood Brothers, Swing Kids, stuff that goes bang-bang-slash really fast while puncturing lungs with precision riffs – yet xbxrx’s performance of ‘Beat Rolls On’, the MySpace song in question, shakes and rattles like little else you’ve heard; its roots are ones you’ve certainly tripped over before, but the fall knocked your mind’s eye unconscious and now you’re struggling to recall specific times and places. Not that comparisons really have a place here: xbxrx are a band, like the crew that opened the show, that exist purely in the moment, that plays as if the Earth’s crust’s about ready to crack and all they can do to keep the gushing lava at bay is to party as fantastically as possible.

Once again: “Yeeeaaaarrrggghhh”. Lovvers and xbxrx in summary, then: fan-fucking-tastic top-rockin’ joint-poppin’ tomfoolery that’s simultaneously sweet ‘n’ sour and vibrantly visceral and all over my face like a rash from tonguing weirdie-beardies and in my ears like sticky oil, unmovable and deafening. The humming that persists until the next morning is a badge of honour; the necessity to tell anyone who’ll listen how fantastic punk-rock can be is immeasurable.

Photograph of xbxrx by the_junes, from their Flickr page here. If YOU are the_junes, please get in touch for a proper credit! A video clip of the gig can be viewed here