Loudmouth Soup
Live at Faversham on Saturday, 16th October 2004
Ok so it's another wet dreary evening at Leeds and I have no idea where the Faversham is, that is until I realised that it was right behind the Uni which made me feel like a complete knobby creek. It's the first time at the Faversham as you might have guessed and mind you it's not a half bad venue, comfy ass warming leather sofas and clean toilets always score highly; but I'm not really sure about the wedding reception that's being held ten metres away form the stage. Guessing the bride and groom either really love their live music or have the brain capacity of a kangaroo on crack.
Anywhos the bands are on late, which meant multiple extra trips to the bar to kill the time so apologies now for the dilhole of a review that is about to be thrust into your retina. There appears to be an empty crater that's void of life where a crowd should be which really put a dampener on thing but as they say the show must go on... or should it.
The first band on are the Astral Flyers. Described as "retro rock" in Dazed and Confused magazine, they thrash out tunes that your mommy and daddy would have disapproved of. Is this a good thing? Well not exactly. Although the played tighter than Kiera Knightly's backside I can't exactly remember any of the songs they played, and no, this is not due to the alcohol consumption. Although shredding through the blues scales and thrusting the overdrive like the impending apocalypse is all well and good, I found that the band lacked the kind of songs that separate good bands and shit hot bands apart and this was a shame as it was evident that this band could play with the lead guitarist whammying and soloing as if Satan himself was threatening to stick his flaming pitchfork up his arse; but in an overly saturated genre that is dominated by bands such as the Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, I found that the band lacked the consistency and the edge to truly captivate me into donning my leather trousers and rocking out like there's no tomorrow.
Up next were the The Nervous Shakedown and it was easy to see why recent reviews of them had compared them to Queens of The Stone Age. With the singer/bassist looking like Josh Hommes secret love child, the band thrashed out pulse pounding tracks that were very reminiscent of the first Queens of the Stone Age album, but with the singer thundering his Thunderbird, which was a thing of beauty. It gave the band that raw edge that could be seen in the early Icarus Line, before they started going all prog-gothy on us. The Nervous Shakedown are the sort of band that makes you want to go to a dirty biker club and start a bar fight with the meanest lowlife you could find. Could just be the drinks talking but it's all good stuff.
The show ends with Loudmouth Soup. Now I'm not really too keen on the name, it keeps bringing up images of Bowling for Soup, the fat untalented beefcakes of pop rock, but anyways Loudmouth Soup are nothing like the American Michelin men.
Firstly they have talent and that's by the bucket load. Their fusion of classic indie and alternative country rock seemed effortless. They have the ability to create uplifting songs with a country flavour to it and then produce melancholic melodies, thus creating a very diverse sound and with shed loads of pedal steel and slide guitars any fans of country blues would easily feel at home. Songs such as "In the night" had a slight resemblance to Mercury Rev, whilst others had a very Superfurry's feel to which fused to the underlying country blues very well.
Overall it was an enjoyable night but the only dampener on the evening was the graveyard atmosphere of the venue, maybe we should have invited the wedding reception.
