27th February
The Ritz
7/10
Every year to celebrate the NME awards the magazine hosts four of its most treasured bands. This year’s tour started in the stereotypical shambles that plague the music business with The Amazing Snakeheads cancelling their appearance on the eve of the tour starting. Their replacement The Wytches got pulled in just in time for their date at The Ritz, adding to the bill of Slaves, Fat White Family and headliners Palma Violets. These four bands have very little in common in terms of music style, but whilst watching them it felt like the overriding theme of the night was some sort of bizarre dream.
With The Wytches opening, a strange psychedelic grunge descended, giving the room a sense that something wasn’t quite right. Then Slaves followed providing their take on old school punk, with an anger as strong as that of Rotten in his hay day. The band’s simplistic outlook on music fell flat on some tracks with the lyrics sounding at best foolish irony and at worst utter bollocks.
After being dragged kicking and screaming from an uneasy dream to an angry nightmare, Fat White Family came to bring back the strangeness. The band have been NME darlings over the past year since their debut broke, but watching them perform was a little disappointing. Perhaps they’d been told to tone it down for a pre-watershed performance after rumours of them throwing their own excrement at some of their first shows. This resulted in their performance seeming somewhat stale, though they were still able to hold a crowd with the hits from their first album.
Palma Violets brought the gig back to reality producing their chorus heavy brand of indie rock. They were likeable and energetic, but you couldn’t help draw comparisons to The Libertines without the charismatic performances from Carl Bârat and Pete Doherty. This wasn’t helped by lead singer Samuel Fryer wearing a Doherty-esque sun hat.
This mish mash of genres does reflect the eclectic set of music contained within the pages of the NME, but I’m unsure if it translates well to a live audience as the crowd only seemed to come together when headliners Palma Violets took to the stage. That said, it’s hard to deny that each of these bands still has the songs to make for a great evening of music.
