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Review: 'Lovely Eggs, The / Thick Richard / Arch Femmesis'
'The Crescent, York, 29th May 2022'   


-  Genre: 'Punk/New Wave'

Our Rating:
Something happened to The Lovely Eggs in the last couple of years. Yes, lockdown, resulting in successive tours being postponed. Yes, a single with Iggy Pop that managed to hit the #1 slot in both the vinyl and physical singles sales chart simultaneously. But something else happened. In their live absence – perhaps partly on account of the aforementioned single – their popularity surged, meaning that the tour, finally rescheduled from 2020 and then 2020, has seen them play – and pack out – the biggest venues of their career to date.

What’s interesting about this is that they’re 100% DIY. The conventional record label model is that if bands don’t break on their first, and certainly their second album, they’ve had it. 2020’s ‘I Am Moron’ is album number six in a 16-year career. And it’s only now they’ve really rocketed from admired cult act to significant players. They absolutely deserve it, too, and their journey is a truly inspirational one.

As a consequence, an hour or so before the show, there were just 28 tickets left for the show in this 400+ capacity venue. No mean feat for a Sunday night, especially in York, which isn’t exactly renowned for its enthusiasm. But tonight, they more than made up for it, giving openers Arch Femmesis an exuberant welcome from an unusually large early-doors crowd.

The Nottingham duo deliver a set of compellingly dark, stark, post-punk electro, at times calling to mind The Flying Lizards. While Meddla blasts out some icy waves of synth, paired with thudding beats and some grinding synth bass frequencies, Zera Tønin may be cane-thin and almost disappear when turning sideways, but possesses an immense and intense presence. She stalks menacingly, throwing contortionist shapes while exuding an aggressive sexuality. She enunciates the lyrics in a way that casts a nod to Siouxsie, while filling the stage with jerky, wiry dancing. Announcing a new song, it slides into a sassy cover of ‘You Really Got Me’. ‘Medusa’ is stark, industrial goth, and they leave with the in-yer-face ‘Pussy Bitch’ that goes down an absolute storm.

It may not be a new thing, especially not after Sleaford Mods had JB Barrington open for them, and in the process highlight just how much crossover there can be between the two disciplines, but for all that, even in 2022, putting a poet on as a support at a gig is still a gamble. Manchester’s Thick Richard continues the lineage from Salford’s Barrington and – it almost goes without saying – John Cooper Clarke of Lancashire poets performing punk gigs with sets of shouty, ranty poems. Richard is very much in the style of JCC with his relentless rapidfire delivery, accompanied by interjections of commentary and self-deprecation (and self-contradiction). It may be a bit one tempo, but one suspects that’s as much out of necessity – pause for a moment and a punk audience will heckle the living fuck out of you –
but the hours of practice that must have gone into this performance must be staggering. He had some good lines, too, and made for an entertaining performance.

The Eggs are boiling hard from straight out of the traps. The last time I saw them was at Long Division in Wakefield, a fair few years ago now (2015, in fact, and covered on these very virtual pages), and if they were ace then, they’ve even acer now. They seem to have simply upped their game exponentially, and deliver one of those sets where the songs are packed so tight there’s no time to draw breath. Full throttle raucous punk energy. The crowd are spilling their beer over themselves in their enthusiasm within a couple of songs, and they swing between vintage punk and quintessential grunge, pasting away full throttle like a Lancastrian Ramones if they’d been a duo.

The downside of bands getting bigger is that they attract casuals and cockends, and there were a couple who were conspicuous throughout, but they don’t get to detract as things start to get a bit crazy.

The banging of the gong heralds the arrival of the ‘Magic Onion’ and all hell breaks loose. There are some nice sequenced synth lines in the mix, and the pair boast all the hooks alongside the driving guitar and high energy drumming. Meanwhile, it’s not so much a moshpit that’s evolved as a foaming frenzy as half the venue is bouncing, jogging, and clapping. And rightly so – because this is FUN. And yes, it’s truly excellent. And if you can find a better Sunday night, I want to hear about it. Although I may struggle, with the ringing in my ears from this belter of a gig.
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Lovely Eggs, The / Thick Richard / Arch Femmesis - The Crescent, York, 29th May 2022
The Lovely Eggs
Lovely Eggs, The / Thick Richard / Arch Femmesis - The Crescent, York, 29th May 2022
Thick Richard
Lovely Eggs, The / Thick Richard / Arch Femmesis - The Crescent, York, 29th May 2022
Arch Femmesis