iLiKETRAiNS
Live at HiFi Club on Friday, 2nd September 2005
The Hi Fi Club is nicely full. Not heaving. Nicely full. It's a Friday, and the young and beautiful of Leeds have come out. The weekend starts here. Two whole days of being seen on the scene, talking the talk and walking the walk. Tonight's menu is: O Fracas and iLiKETRAiNS, both supported by Xi.
Xi are first on - introduced as 'proper' rock, sorry rawk. Rawk they do, but not in a good way. Hackneyed old vocal lines, a guitarist with fashion sense straight out of Def Leppard and the most god awful, clichéd metal stances make this a real start to forget!
The impossibly youthful and energetic O Fracas were the next course. Before the Frac' arrived on stage the compère demonstrated admirable gumption trying to get the crowd to shuffle forward. The O Fracas sound is a difficult animal to pigeon-hole. Place two guitars, a set of drums and a bass in a box. Add some lemon juice, rhythm and thyme and some acid. Shake thoroughly. The resulting heady concoction is a psychedelic, guitary animal. The drums spin beautifully, seemingly uncontrolled before the track comes together into a gorgeous conjoined whole. By the end of the set the band have all been jumping about, bashing all kinds of percussion instruments. Each song is bursting with ideas, themes and tunes. iLiKEOFRACAS.
iLiKETRAiNS were the sumptuous main course. The omnipresent compère introduced them as a band about to pack bigger venues than this. Best catch them before they go all Kaiser Chiefs on us then. Barring a major change in direction or national taste they may never trouble the British top ten, but the mainstream's loss is our gain. iLiKETRAiNS are a band capable of producing ridiculously gorgeous, slow burning tracks filled with bugle, graceful vocal lines, and lyrics about knives in kitchens. It's just not a teen pop chorus a la Hard Fi. Songs are deliberate, slow and obviously thought through. It is the intelligence of this band which is obvious and impressive. With bands like this around, who needs McFly?
