with Perm and Dum Language
Reviewed by Aleksandra Brzezicka.
This event was organised by The Shed.
Ship Spacetoast came all the way from outer space to collapse at The Shed and smash it with the support of George Pannell, Dum Language and Perm.
First on, Perm was a bit like your local school band with an ambition to be the next big indie thing. They started off with perfectly pleasant Sober to continue with Love In Summertime. Going for the surf rock vibe, they’ve got lost somewhere in between an attempt to play it cool and the chaos. While their version of Arctic Monkeys Where The Sun Goes Down had the cheeky vigour of the original, same thing can’t be said the cover of Tame Impala Feels Like We Only Go Backwards.
Perm need to find their sense of wholeness as a band if they want to go forward.
Dum Language played their very first gig and it wasn’t dumb at all. They debuted with grungy/emo Silk Road with a few nice breakdowns and stepped up with controllably dirty Mr Noname. While If You Wanna, was a track to bounce along to when thinking about the wild adventure with your new crush, Face Off was the one to crash the set. That sharp anti-ode to the ‘strange sickening feeling in the stomach’ caused by social media had both rock ‘n’ roll riffs with a punk twist and shouty vocal that went along with distorted noises. It got the best out of the whole band.
Co-headliner, George Pannell, makes music for kool kids of the post-hipsters era that can admire their playful indie pop with shoegazing tendencies. After starting off with a new, indie-spirited and bluntly noisy track, they enlightened the mood with Royal Affair, an up-lifting youthful tune which upbeat melody that reminds a bit of Peter Bjorn And John.
Then they jumped straight into Going Away and got us suddenly dreaming about going camping at the sea on a sunny day. It was an ideal intro to the next one, Dreams, the best track in its beautiful mellowness. They finished off with their newest, more indie rock influenced, single, Fade Away.
George Pannell’s music is both easily digestive and sensually intellectual. They’ve got me intrigued.
Spacetoast is the band we didn’t know we needed. Dan Hewitt (vocals/guitar), Matt Roulstone (bass), Eleanor Sanders (guitar) and Joe Hewitt (drums) bought together the rawness of punk and laid-back, grungy arrogance lightened up with the lively indie riffs to shake the crowd to the core. Stamping on the stage, they unleashed the first dose of fury with Wasted, a shouty one with psycho breakdowns.
The 11 track set featured both covers and originals, moshpit initiating Love Machine, perversely superior to original (sorry, Britney), Toxic and mad ‘n’ wild I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, and other originals. Stranger, ‘about rapey guys,’ with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude and was a bold middle finger to the worst aspect of club culture.
‘What the f***k is a truncheon?’ shouted Dan, near the end of the night, as an intro to Truncheon-25 and threw himself in the crowd. I still don’t know what a truncheon is but I’m sure as hell that soon enough everyone will know what Spacetoast is.
Watch the video below for an interview with Spacetoast and their performance of Truncheon 25 on the night:
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