THE SKINFLINTS + KALEL - Doghouse, Dundee 13-04-08
There's always that air of uncertainty when you've seen a band for the first time, they've blown you away and then, a few months later, you get to see them for the second time, not knowing what it's gonna do. Thus to Dundee, we had the second coming of The Skinflints.
The Skinflints are a quintet from the Glasgow side of things and they were playing this gig fresh from a sold-out gig to over 350 people in Glasgow, two nights before - an example of the up and coming potential this band has. With lead guitarist, keyboard player doubling up on drum, kit drummer, bassist and rhythm guitarist/vocalist, they took to the stage and the result was a set that saw the art of how to build and arrange a performance, scale some impressive heights.
They begin things on a rush, with the keyboard pproviding this really intense undercurrent that acts as a kind of foundation on which the drums hammer out the rhythms, while the guitar work is, on one hand, more textural lead while on the other, more riffing rhythms, while the bass is the pivot and on top of all this the vocals soar out - so far so good. Gradually things begin to build, the second track becomes stronger still and by now, you're hearing the band powering up on songs that are really beginning to take hold. What you're also awar eof is the visual impact of the band as, while they don't actually leap about, there are so many sounds and layers coming from that stage, you're either looking at the way the drummer is so busy, trying to decide what parts of the guitar density each guitarist is playing, watching the keyboar player hunched over the keys while the bassist does his best Bill Wyman stance and the vocalist starts to become ever more animated. For the third track, I think something called ""When You Get There", they start things off in a kind of driving industrial indie style, and you expect things to maybe erupt quite early on as the song really lifts off. But they don't, and you settle down to enjoy the power of the band as the arrangement ensues. But then, about two thirds of the way through, just as you really do least expect it, the whole band just goes nuclear and this massive wall of guitars, keys and drums explodes into life as the vocals drive home and you are lierally in awe of what you are hearing, the fact that the keyboard player is now hammering away on his drum to embellsih the mighty work that the main drummer is providing, that the guitars are taking what is an extraordinary roloe of lead and background at the same time and that the finale is simply mindblowing, being a truly defining moment in the set so far.
From there, the only way is up, as the songs become ever more powerful, intense, with the vocalist just piling it on, yet all the band playing clearly as band and individuals, the songs arranged to bring out the incredible sense of dynamics that this band has as just one of several weapons in their arsenal that sucks you into their world - at one point, I was so mesmerised by the sound and what was going on in terms of onstage playing, that it felt like being in some parallel world rather than The Doghouse. All this, allied to a sound mix courtesy of the guys from Audio Wave, that even someone who'd followed the band around to their last few gigs, acknowledged as the "best sound he'd heard, including Glasgow", meant that the fierst time was not a flash in the pan and that this band is really doing something familiar from a wholly different and original angle.
That they were unafraid to take things down a tad, was ilustrated when they played a slower number called, I think, "Yoursong", yet lost none of the depth and strength that had characterised the set to date, and, in essence, the first true "indie power ballad" I've heard. So it was left to the final trilogy of tracks to see things out in a positive blitz of glory, the lead guitarist producing some astounding fx from the guitar, the twin drummers lifting the roof off, the vocalist even going solo at one point as that voice just scorched through the venue, and the band as a whole laying down three insistent and absolutely jaw-droping songs to end one almighty gem of a set.
"Stunning" is the only word you can use!!
The even weirder thing about all that is that Kalel were absolutely perfect to follow it. What they don't have in sheer intensity - and their is an altogether different aproach anyway - they make up for in some of the tightest, most together sounding and sapot-on arrangements around, as the quartet play a set that can't fail to move you. From the opening dynamics of the first sone right through to the power of the last, this is a band who've only been going a few months, yet have songs that are all superb, play like they've been together for years, have individual musicians who are as good in their own right as they are as a whole and, in lead singer and lyricist Frankie, have a a guy who can deliver the songs withe passion, strength, intensity and a commercial sensibility that gives the songs that extra ingredient that makes you go home with more than half the set swirling around in your head. "Poor Little Rich Girl" continues to be the obvious "single" with its addictive chorus and driving arrangements, all at just the right length for the best serious listening pop, while elsewhere, the combination of Mark's mix of restrained, psychdelic, riffing, soloing and huge sounding guitar work, alied to Frankie's solid rhythm playing and the rhythm section's solid, driving foundations, all provide a strong, varied and consistent set of quality songs with some thing that separates them from many, is original to a tee yet is easy to get into as well as being songs that you'll want to hear again and again. Superb!!
So, in wholly different ways, two bands that are surely destined for the top and two bands that I'd go and see - on the same or on different bills - as often as I could without ever tiring of each.