Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam Album Launch All-Dayer – Birmingham – live review

Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam – Black Mekon – Yr Poetry – Sonne Mond – Burning Alms – Bad Girlfriend – Repeat of Last Week – Exotic Pets

Hosted by This Is Tmrw

Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham

August 5th 2017

Fighting Boredom like Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam a lot, they’ve almost finished their tour with Yr Poetry and the date in their hometown of Birmingham is an all day event to launch their new double album. Eight bands and all well worth catching. It promises to be an excellent Saturday afternoon and night, read what we thought and look at the pictures below.

The Kings Heath High Street is hot this afternoon, the pavement in front of the Hare and Hounds is packed full of people. We have a stroll and get a beer in front of a rogues gallery of Brummies in a pub whose name I forget and a spicy chicken wrap. We go back to the venue and get another drink.

The Hare and Hounds is a great pub, it’s huge and, judging from the amount of people here, popular too. There are two rooms upstairs and today the larger one is the domain of the wonderful Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam who are officially launching their new album, a double album that is stuffed full of guitar goodness.

The first band on are Exotic Pets, they are a three piece, the stickers they have left for people on the merch stand show triple breasts with tassles, somehow this is ace. The vocal is more shouted than sung to begin with. They sway between slow and dangerous sounding, Oddball indie and a Post-Punky vibe. They have a rock hard rhythm section that holds it all down as the guitar adds to the texture of the songs. They kind of remind me of bands like the Fall, that is, if the Fall were any good which Exotic Pets certainly are. So not really like the Fall at all I suppose. Imagine the first band on in a list of eight or so bands and then multiply how good you would expect them to be by about fifteen, that’s how good Exotic Pets are and the rest of the bands have got to really get their acts in order to match them.

A quick blast of sunshine and we’re back in the room, the changeovers

are really quick, Repeat of Last Week start off with a huge burst of feedback then the guitars crash in precise and razor sharp. The riffs are fast with a high tuneful vocal that works very well with the chopping of the song. They play ever so slightly off beat indie and between the songs the music doesn’t stop it just morphs into jazzy drums or rolling waves of feedback. The bass and drums give us a classic sixties mod beat and with the guitar over the top makes a great big loud indie loveliness. With a rock hard groove and angular guitars that appear to be trying to wipe out the beat they are great.

So far and two great bands, both of which I’d happily pay money to see again.

And then this lot come along. Bad Girlfriend look young, no, they look really young. One has a denim jacket with

Cramps and Viva Le Rock patches on, impeccable taste already. They play demented garage punk rockabilly that feels like it’s powered by piles of sherbert and cheap orange squash, they have so much energy pent up and ready to be released on stage that I am exhausted just watching them. The guitarist is playing like a demon, at the very lip of the stage, on the floor, pretty much wherever he feels like. They play like Ramones but rawer, it’s great.

They start songs slowly, almost delicately and then kick the living shit out of the tune and thrash it up, like Rock’n’Roll for kids in flying saucers.

The crowd are shouting for them to take their shirts off, and they play a slow song which is a cramped right to the bone rockabilly lament then slam into more noise, they’re in the audience playing then on the speakers with their Swamp werewolf rockabilly. It’s the kids on Sun Records managed to get their hands on fuck tons of amplification and pedals. Their last time starts slow and sounds like a call to arms, it grows and when the inevitable explosion happens it kicks off into another punky thrash that is ultimately rock’n’fucking roll. Brilliant.

Burning Alms follow, and are circling and spaced out to start with,

the drums have a slow, hard and primal kick that gets you straight in the gut. The guitars lead the music and the vocal is low in the mix, almost lost, but tuneful and working around the rest. The drums get faster and so high in the mix it hurts, the guitar and bass fuzz out and the vocal, still buried, is urgent. It is loose, layered and fucking massive.

They build up the noise until it breaks and both the build up and collapse take you away and you are lost in the whole vibe. The feeling is epic, even at its fastest the music never slips into pure thrash, it always sounds like it’s exactly precise and controlled, and it gets louder and louder. A full on sonic attack, pulverising you with the sound. There’s echoes of bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr here but that’s only a gist of what they are and where their sound heads. At the end of the set the vocalist says that they have albums to give away and to come and ask, so I did and they had, excellent set.

Sonne/Mond are different again, they have keyboards and guitar, they start with static and long drawn out guitar chords that increase in volume and build up the atmosphere as the the guitar plucks out high notes over the wash of sound. The soundscapes around the room bring to mind remote, broken alien landscapes and vast dark night skies.

The drumbeat starts, electronic, heavy and relentless, the synths are high and the vocal is tuneful and intense which draws you in closer to the music. It’s cold and emotionless, growing in intensity and then falling away. It is all encompassing and holds the room as it becomes jarring and too much but still you can’t walk away. The last song’s vocal is more emotional and full of feeling but that is countered by the still, bleak music.

Yr Poetry are great, guitar and drums. They also have the best tee shirt of the night the

‘Dog Eats Homework’ one as the snapper calls it. They start with ‘Sons’ which is about how ‘Being in a group is a hideous boy’s club’. They have a brutal punk rock sound but with high and clear vocals. They are noisy as hell but have a pop edge to the sound that catches you out. They are primitive and ace. ‘Uproar’ is about a shit club in Birmingham that is angry, full of spite and has even harder shut off music.

I’ve given up asking how just drums and guitar can make music as full of sound as this, I’ve seen so many bands now that are just duos that I just go with it, but that doesn’t detract from the glorious noise that Yr Poetry produce.

They are punk rock a-go-go snotty, young, loud and loose. They announce ‘Slower songs now’ and the marching band rhythm matches the atmospheric guitar perfectly. The last song starts with big splashes of sound and then quiet with the vocal the focal point. It’s a big song with an even bigger heart. They argue about the lyrics and if he got it right then they go back into the song, it’s another great set. It looks like they are exhausted and have given their all and they finish.

Black Mekon wear suits, the drummer has a flat cap, glasses, a beard and a huge grin. The two frontmen have superhero masks on, one has a bandaged hand and bandage around the sleeve of his jacket. They look razor sharp. The music is straight ahead bass drums and guitar with a brutally distorted vocal. It’s repetitive and relentless and as intense as hell. They go into a fucking massive rock’n’roll groove and they are unstoppable. The vocals are right on the point of feeling robotic. The songs are short, sharp and fucking great.

Then they start singing harmonies, it’s all sorts of brilliant. They don’t drag anything out, just enough of each song.

It may be buzzing, distorted to hell and punk as fuck but this is a slice of pure Cramps Rock’n’Roll horror story B-Movie madness and you can hear the werewolves howling at the moon behind the music. That’s a true compliment too, the Cramps got it exactly right so any comparisons with them are well earned. I’m unsure now if the masks are to protect them or us, this always has been the devil’s music after all. The harmonica seals the deal for me, as they dedicate the rest of their set to Bad Girlfriend. They are burning the same torch.

The bass slaps up and down, the drums skip in and all of a sudden it’s nineteen fifty whatever and the ghosts of teddyboys and pony tailed girls jive around the outside of the crowd, a skinny wasted figure in snakeskin hipsters and stilettos watches and smiles and the air is thick with hotrod oil and rusty switchblades, rotting leather jackets and hair grease. An absolute must see.

You might ask what the hell can follow that. We didn’t, we already knew.

Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam are what this night is all about, their new album is on

lurid picture disc and is brilliant. they wander onstage, set up, walk back off then go back. A buzz of bass noise, some chords cut around the room and an annihilation of guitars slams us against the wall, it’s ‘The Mirage’ the opener of the new record and it’s even harder and rawer than on wax. It sprawls on and on, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam doing what they do best, find a groove, hit a groove and take it to it’s conclusion.

They play ‘Auto’ and its glorious mess of sound surrounds the joyous song and they take you away on a wave of noise. The guitars are harder than Husker Du with the same core of strength and melody. The vocal is angry and the tune is all. You get overpowered by the wall of guitar but the strength of the melody captures and keeps you. ‘Ricky Butler’ has high and fierce guitars and then the SFL wall of sound. It does quieten but you know that’s only so it can explode again. The vocal is loud and angry. Sink or Swim off the new album is slow, massive and emotional, the harmonies make the songs even better as the guitars blow you away yet again. It is too loud, too distorted and the songs jump around all over the place, but that’s not a criticism, it’s the whole bloody point of being here. I want my ears to buzz when I leave, I want messy, beautiful punk rock goodness, it’s why I and I imagine most of the crowd are here in the first place. The songs are full of harmonies, breaks, hooks and just full on grooviness, and to be honest if you don’t think it’s good enough you just haven’t got it yet, these guys are good enough to turn you around.

King of England is jarring, big and nasty, Fuuuuuuk starts slowly but is filled with anger and low antagonism, you are once again just waiting for it to explode.

Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam carve their own path down the road, there’s no genre fighting and no hidden motive, they just make bloody good music that deserves to be heard.

They keep playing, old songs and new songs, when they all sing at the same time it is glorious, a harmony buried in the mashing up of six string mayhem an immense amount of power.

They hold a tune, make it massive and immense and then take it to the extremes of psychedelia. They play the start of Paranoid and laugh, Andy plays guitar on top of the audience. This is their night and could well be their time.

Get onto their Bandcamp page and check out why we like them so much, a brilliant night with brilliant bands. Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, find them.

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Photos

Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam