Sherry Fest is back for a second instalment two years after the initial event. Celebrating all things Sherry related in the heart of Islington.
By the time we got in the first act Gavenger was already on, he reminded me of a classic bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream that had been open for at least 5 years, lurking in the back of a booze cupboard, he sat strumming away on Generation Crime sounding like a north london Leonard Cohen, it was down at heart. Muck It Up seemed easy enough to do, the chords meandered a touch.
He told some stories between the song and in the tradition of wandering minstrels he played a song that had been made up from a dumb question as the reply. He introduced Combustible as being an old song, his hard-core fans arrived just before it started, demanding he restart the set for them, it made some of us smile at least. Before he closed with one more gentle rumination from his back pages.
Next on were The Affections who were more of a 5 year old Amontillado kind of band, made up of Mr Sherry himself and a bunch of proper Charlies including Chris Fox and Ben Harding and the guy from loads of garage rock bands. They are playing their classic weddings, Bar-Mitzvahs and funerals covers set, that opened with a spikily shambolic version of Primary that has some good sullen vocals.
They took the band's first trip down under for a very cool take on Julie Is a Junkie the old Eastern Dark classic. Wasted certainly gave Carrie Underwood a run for her money. with Chris Fox battering away at his bass. They did a far too sober version of The Saints This Perfect Day, how can you sing it without slurring all the words like Chris Bailey used too, it even sounded like they knew all the right chords, that’s not how to cover this song.
Jones was played like they had all missed out on there usual Bostick fix before coming on stage and were a couple of minutes away from having the shakes and dribbling noses, while Ben nailed the guitar solo. They then deviated from the setlist to go full on karaoke with one of the most regularly covered songs Police Car this was nicely deviant and got everyone singing with them.
They took me back to the Duchess of York in Leeds in 1989 for a great rambunctious version of The Hard On's All Set To Go that had loads of energetic drumming. Of course American wasn't the Lana Del Ray song, how very dare you suggest such a thing. Oh Rock & Roll these guys haven't killed your soul and are ready with one more song to make us all smile while they put us all Up Against The Wall to blast out some frenetic punk like we all want to be Radio 6 DJ's who play the odd gig here and there.
Next on were Boulder Fields who were in the Oloroso slot playing the band's first ever concert apparently, main man Cameron Fraser has enlisted help from one of his former band mates in the Cateran, a fact that excited a large part of tonight's audience as well as a drummer.
They opened with Mountains In Oceans and were straight away a lot livelier than on the bands recent album With All The Other Ghosts, this had a good driving shoegaze grungy sound. Wooden Arm had plenty of energy and slightly disturbing lyrics.
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Cameron then dedicated Tina to Kai Davidson his former band mate in The Cateran who wrote this song for the Ache album, this got good and dirty. Deep Sign is a new song that had a great bassline and urgent guitar mangling.
They took us down to the Harbour Wall that was a good bit more wistful, I wish I could work out what the added notes I put down for Selfish Act were, but either way it sounded good and went down well. Kinda Mean was well kinda grungy neo shambling brilliance.
Gather had some spry guitar moves with it, they made a lot of people happy by finishing with The Caterans biggest tune Cage, this is a band who I hope play a lot more gigs after this tentative debut.
Finally it was time for this evenings Fino band Dealing With Damage featuring James "Jerez" Sherry on drums for the second time tonight as Ed Wenn introduced the first song of the set by Walking Backwards onto the stage, well not quite, but the 5 piece started blasting it out, the mosh pit erupted, it seemed all the under 45's in the audience went wild and the older folk looked on like we wanted to join in but didn't have the energy.
Hate Can Set You Free was totally bouncy punk fun. John's Gone was dedicated to the bands producer John Hannon who died while they were making the bands last album Use The Daylight, sadly his replacement Pat Collier has also gone since working with the band, damn this was powerful and spot on tribute.
Head Full Of Feedback was the cue for the mosh pit to get more insane, the bands current bass player got them all going mad. We Make Bombs To Feel Safe is sadly far to topical with this weeks arguments about if the Ukraine can use the missiles they been sold how they want too, this was a stonking version.
Bigots V The Mad Professor was the usual blur of epithets and spiky keyboards The Off Switch is something they don't seem to know where it is, this was full on. Nickey Nickey had a long rambling intro from Ed by way of dedication, before they got the kids bouncing all over the place. M wasn't totally in love with Pop Music it certainly got some squiggly nonsense in my notebook about rejects of some kind.
Rinse Repeat was complete with a short stage dive from the bass meister, Ed upped his energy levels and they closed the set with Some Colours that seemed to leave them all looking very happy and just a little shattered at all the sherry they managed to down.
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