Friday 24 May 2002

If you came to see excellent, well-crafted pop music that could appeal to a broad base of people tonight, then you were in most unexpected good luck, for tonight, Matthew, Beef Sharky are going to be doing their very best impression of a very good band. So good, in fact, I believed every word of it. The first song I caught was a great example of why you ought to believe it, too - A great vocal performance of Mr Neafcy, the somehwat shyer and burlier guitarist, a tremendous flurry of guitar-ry squawks from the pink-toppped Mr Bailey, and the rhythm section pounding away like a...errrmmm... like a pound, actually. Well, come on, there's only so many times a reviewer can say the words "Rock Solid" without becoming bored of it. Anyway, it rocked like a bastard, as they say, although they never seem to say which bastard in particular, do they? "It rocked like Edmund from King Lear", for example.

But I digress. More excellent rockery follows, with some great singing and guitar playing from Mr Bailey, and then, we get "Say Gouranga", which my mate described as "Like working class Barenaked Ladies". I assume he meant the band, rather than the readers' wives section. A jolly cautionary tale, with Jennie Chapman providing suitable Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da-styled piano accompaniment, although it did threaten to fly dangerously close to becoming a modern-day version of "Gertcha". Oh, ask yer dad. The most important point to raise here is Ver Sharks almost seamless ability to flit from one songwriting genre to another without really disrupting the flow of things - you get big rock, you get music hall, you get anthemic stadium, you get small lost-sounding tunes, man, you get everything. Personally, I might have been minded not to place two comparitively slow paced songs together, however excellent said songs might be, but who am I to write other people's set lists for them, eh? Eh? Come to that, who am I? Eh? Go on. Answer me that, then.

Sorry, forgot I wasn't still at school for a second there. To continue and, as you might say, conclude, things ended up being rather "up steam" (as no-one has ever said before - hey, I'm at the very cutting edge of semantics here) after that, and all proceedings concluded as they had commenced - with the very best of rock and/or roll. If you missed them, or haven't seen them yet, you really ought to try and catch them - as they say, they're the man. Well, three of them are.

I missed the first half a song by Scout because of a Benny Hill-inspired three-hundred-people-queueing-to-get-into-a-telephone-box-style conga line coming down the stairs I was waiting to go up. I was, I will admit, very much surprised by the number of people still upstairs when I eventually got up there - I never knew the Yorkie could have so many people leave, and it still be full. Anyway, the music, yes? Well, the bit I heard of the opening number was jolly and jazzy enough, in a hard rock version of "One Night in Tunisia" kind of way. It sounded a little like it only really got going just as it was about to finish, but that could be due to my late arrival, as I say. So, on with the show, and song number two is - well, oddly, a dead ringer for "Play That Funky Music, White Boy". Much has been made elsewhere of Scout's lead singer Emma Crellin, and whilst she is clearly the focal point of the band, it must be said that the vocal harmonies and counter-melodies of bassist Gav Ions provide a great deal of relief - Emma's range-spanning melodies can be a little too stratospheric at times, and it's nice to be brought safely back down to earth again.

Gav also provided me with the first major surprise of the night in "Disposables" (Not, I assume, a tribute to Micheal Franti's old band) when he launched headlong into a Level 42-tastic bass solo. Most odd, but not, it ought to be said, as odd as Emma's apparently Freddie Mercury inspired dancing at the end of the song. Scout are quite unusual in some respects - they are certainly the only band I can think of where much of the songs are based around big, loping gutar riffs, and yet said guitar players lurk morosely around either side of the stage. I am also a little confused about what I have previously read about their music; much of which seems to have concentrated on comparing them (favourably or otherwise) to The Sundays, or Sleeper, or Echobelly, or some other female fronted band of the nineties. To my ears, however, the nineties band they most strongly resemble is actually....ummmm....The Spin Doctors. No, really, think about it - a plethora of loping riffs making up most of the songs, with the vocal hooks being spot-welded over the guitar melodies. I'll admit that his voice was a lot lower, and tremendously large ginger beards are entirely (and gratefully) absent from the stage, but there is a similarity. Honest.

That was what I was thinking during the very dubiously titled "Meat Chop", where you get big chunky riffery, Emma telling us about how she's "trying my best to be cynical" (shurely shome mishtake?), and then what can only be described as a vocal tribute to the Flying Pickets. Gamely, they tell us to join in, the words only being "Doo-do-do", so that wouldn't be too hard. But guys, you do it so nicely.... Really, only the "nice floaty acoustic number" that is "Setting Sun" (or was that "Setting Son" - The Jam's influence goes a lot wider than you might think) gives a hint as to those aforementioned Sundays comparisons, but it doesn't particularly live up to it's description - there might be an acoustic guitar in it, but it's still full of those ascending-stair-riffs and loud bits to compensate for the verses.

Avoiding the obvious jokes of the "I can clearly see your nuts" variety, "Pistachio" is a big, dancy number sounding like nothing so much as the Talking Heads covering "Living La Vida Loca". Take that as you will. I know I'm right using the word "dancy", because....well, because people started dancing during it. The restraint of the lady standing next to the bar grew too great to bear, and she hurled herself and her mate on to the dance floor just at exactly the point that the song metamorphosised from swinging latin love stomp in to a waltz time number in the manner of mid-eighties Everything But The Girl. It wasn't looking good for her, I'll admit, but the fates were on her side, as the song's Ramones-styled "Na na nan nan naaaaaa" coda kicked in just as she realised solo waltzing was not an option. Poor soul. It didn't help that, in true Ramones-fashion, this coda lasted for all of about forty seconds. She didn't know if she was coming or going by the end of the song, but it was too late by then - Scout were very much going themselves. Always good not to have to make a decision, isn't it?

Scout are, undoubtedly, good at what they're doing, although their apparent hyper-sensitivity to any implied criticism does rather diminish my admiration for them. I must admit to being particularly impressed by their rhythm section, who seem to be frequently overlooked in the rush to hand credit elsewhere, and also impressed by the very good job done of sorting the sound levels out. Emma Crellin is an effective front-woman, but her voice is too near to Dolores O'Riordan for my liking. The question, really, is whether or not you like what they do. I don't particularly, not that my opinions matter to Scout, I'm sure, but there's undoubtedly a large number of people who do, and they all seemed to have a great old time tonight. That's enough, isn't it?

Paddy Garrigan