Having not realised that Nothing were playing the Brudenell’s games room, I almost ended up seeing The Sex Pistols Experience by mistake. At least this explained the vast array of punk t-shirts and the proliferation of leather jackets in the bar. Despite fairly low-key promotion, the room’s pretty busy by the time local boy-girl drum ’n’ guitar grunge duo Long Body take to the stage. Admittedly, I’m a bit close to Will Cook’s drum kit, and he’s a heavy hitter, but the guitar’s still a bit low through the PA, which is a pity: Hayley Smith has a nifty chorus-heavy sound, stepping up to a raging overdrive, and it’s propelled some pounding rhythms. In short, good stuff.
The front end of Nothing’s set finds the band struggling to find their form. They don’t seem particularly engaged, and the vocals – not the band’s strong point at the best of times, really –
fall down on the off-key harmonies. Chances are, its more about the fact that most of the songs are new, with ‘Vertigo Flowers’, ‘Dead are Dumb’ and’ ‘Vertigo Flowers’ from their latest album ‘Tied of Tomorrow’, which and has thus far received a rather mixed reception, all dispensed early.
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But five or so tracks in, they step up a gear and they hit a seam of rock-solid riffery. The album’s lead single, ‘Eaten by Worms’ is a massive standout, both on the album and overall, and marks the turning point of the set as they flip the switch from post-rock emo to raging grunge, and from thereon in, it’s riff after riff.
They don’t seem too stoked by the rather quiet audience, but they’ve played Leeds before and have an idea that UK audiences simply don’t whoop it up like they do Stateside. And so it is that the last couple of inches of Scotch go down in a few short slugs (straight from the bottle) to launch the and toward the riff-centric finale of ‘Curse of the Sun’.
There’s no encore, and it doesn’t seem that they’re really an encore band – and for that, respect is due.
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