The Holloways

Live at Joseph's Well on Saturday, 1st April 2006

In the cavernous grime of the Well, it is forever night time. Forever a luminous green-tinged, stale tobacco-clad dark age. As you trundle over the bridge, glance over the concrete strips of grey motorway alive with crawling, black bugs of traffic and step through the cracked wooden doors, you give up on the concept of light and, whilst having a truckload of ink tipped onto the back of your hand, snatch a quick glimpse through the bar windows before taking a final gulp and goodbye, then plunging down the beer-drenched staircase into the band room. On your way, a schedule stickered to the wall on your left squeals out "We are running late! Woohoo!" That would be by two and a half hours, to be specific. This is it, then, folks. We're here for all eternity.

Dirty Electric bristle with devil's minion grins and sly sideways looks, kicking out a thick, swirling flow of mudpool bass and not-filthy-enough-to-warrant-their-name guitars, buzzing with shrieky shouts and scuzzbuckets of gravelly, almost-exciting (but not quite) rampage. They redeem themselves later on when the guitarist cracks some amusing jokes about effects pedals, the North-South divide and, amongst other things, incest - but none of this happened onstage or had anything to do with their music, so here ends my vodka-hindered recollection of this bite-y London three piece.

Piskie Sits' Craig hunches, in a protective shrug, over his guitar, head lowered, thick wads of sandy-striped hair allowing only his mouth to shout out from beneath, his eyes hidden and only his caterwaul and strong, punching arms to hear and see. With his wobbling, defiant stomp of a voice squawking out over a glittering crash of instruments, Piskie Sits mix wandering, lawless pitches and tones with bright energy and screeched-out slabs of rebellious melody. 'Witches' is noisy-yet-sweet tantrum pop to perfection, whilst elsewhere they throw a salty sadness together with a bouncing, raggle-taggle, ear-splitting rabble to create probably the most intriguing melting pot of colour and depth to stumble, singing and gargling, out of Wakefield's corners for a very long time.

Now then. Just look at Jack Afro's hair. Isn't it super. As if to prove that a frizzy brillo-pad bonce automatically instils its owner with a sparky character superior to that of those with more regular moptops (of whom Matthew 'Pigeon' Bowman is most definitely not one; more of this shortly), Mark Crossley and Micky Kerr clatter and burst into slightly-above-the-ordinary booze-hour organ rock with a vital life, wink and glimmer that puts their cheeky chops a cut above the rest and injects their clap-along, easy-rolling rides with a bit of wit and wiriness. Nothing thrilling; although, having said that, we were pretty desperate for nutrition by this point, so anything other than a shank of rhino and a colossus of chips did well to grab my attention.

Okay, okay, I give in. The Pigeon Detectives are a pounding, masculine live force to be reckoned with. A staggering, inebriated, beautiful wreckage falling and charging across the stage, frontman Matt Bowman whips the crowd into a stormy riot with the lassoes of his microphone wires whilst pulling at his t-shirt, yanking it away from his body as though it's on fire and sticking to his skin. A mad thicket of curly bedlam blurs and collapses around his face, from where a barking and blaring mouth gapes with its twinkling, coy smile and yelps out endearingly simple and straightforward words about life in the streets with all its banter, booze and rough glory - all its young love, young anger and young noise. Bassist Dave, his sparkling wide eyes popping with a staring energy, throws himself back and forth at the mic, thumping his guitar and lolling his tongue, shouting the key lines into euphoric faces with an instant, earnest vigour before Matt clambers a stack of amps, cramps himself between the sticky monitors and ceiling, glares out at the surfing flurry of crowd below, swigs from his can, knocks his wild head back and sprays a shower fountain of spit 'n' lager onto our sopping wet heads. Guitarists Ryan and Oliver jerk and jolt with a collected cool whilst drummer Jimmi stands on his seat, reaches down and bashes the kit, now a few feet below him, with a laughing caveman's sense of joyful anarchy. Constantly ribbing each other for their incompetence between songs, sharing jokes and generally glinting with a brotherly camaraderie rarely seen treading the boards, they giggle, gallop and trash their way through a genuinely brilliant performance comprised of 50% gutsy confidence, 50% hollering volume and 300,000% having fun with yer childhood mates, complete with stage invasions and celebratory missiles of lingerie being thrown before a cacophonic 'I'm Not Sorry'. The Pigeon Detectives? One hell of a joyful catastrophe.

After a good cooling down, we giddily trip back inside in anticipation of the hilariously crude naïveté of Micky P Kerr's now-almost-legendary acoustic set with its spoken/stoned-word poems about text messages and drunk sex and songs varying from the bittersweet cloud nine of 'Dreamers' Club' to the voracious nonsense of 'Cannibal'. Add him to MySpace and he'll send you "a little bit o' typin'", apparently. Make sure your mum's not watching.

"You're going home in the back of a police van!" hurls Kristian, singer with Wakey's top notch clatterbags, Last Gang, at the lads in front who've marker pen'd the band's name to their, er, foreheads. Local fame? Very much so, and deservedly, what with their relentless firing of snarling, perfectly-wasted hooligan anthems and crazy amounts of scruffy, loud charm. On a par with their working-class-hero, boy-next-door counterparts from earlier, the Pigeons, they're a pure yet mucky concentration of all that laddish, sordid, violent beauty and spirit of being youthful, mad, free and a little bit lost in a grotty city alongside your best friends in the world.

Finally, The Holloways wander onto the debris-littered scene in the early hours, greeting us a good evening - "Morning, now, surely?" blinks Alfie, sleepily - with their polite, peachy London cheekbones and barging into a set of lyrically-skewed wit and jeering irony, honest tattletales and nicotine jigs. Their vibrant, resonating, jangling guitars compete with duels of fiddle and harmonica, always accompanied by their wonderful clever-urchin attitude. 'Generator' is a lethal shot of spluttering adrenaline, a reminiscence of record players and feeling better, a fags-and-alcohol splattered burst of appreciation for being lucky enough to own just enough copper pence pieces to survive, have a roof over our heads and, above all, be surrounded by all this debauched, dangerous, grubby music.

Rob's dimples peek cheekily as he skips backwards, crashing into obstacles and Alfie's eyes flicker, focussing intently on each and every crowd member from beneath his moth-eaten cap, as they yell, during 'Great Britain', "In a land of hope and glory, do we really rule the waves? The truth is a different story...we're all just a bunch of slaves!" Not to anything other than a mess of sound, we're not - and this is definitely not something to be complaining about.

• www.the-holloways.com
• www.lastgang.co.uk
• www.mickypkerr.co.uk
• www.thepigeondetectives.com
• www.myspace.com/jackafro
• www.myspace.com/piskiesitstheband
• www.myspace.com/dirtyelectric

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