The Beat Surrender

Well, hello all, and welcome to my first ever jumbled, potentially non-sensical and pretty damn un-technical review – start as you mean to go on, eh…

Let me tell you something about me .. my musical past is “eclectic”, to the point of having been in love with such acts as Donna Summer, Metallica, Kaiser Chiefs, Iron Maiden, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Doors, Carter USM, Vanilla Ice, Ice-T/Cube, RHCP’s, Radiohead, Artic Monkeys, Jamie-T and The Hair at some point in my life. I therefore blatantly have no roots to speak of, listen only to what I like at the time and DO NOT understand the technicalities involved in making any kind of music.

Having said that, I know what I like (and like what I know – Yorkshire man an all), and having found myself falling back in love with music about 2 years ago, after many, many years in the rave wilderness. I have steadily progressed from a chance spare ticket for Kaiser Chiefs some 18 months ago, to a gig-a-week man, loving his new drug of choice, Live Music. I was therefore a pleased Bradford bunny when I recently became the fortunate beneficiary of freebie tickets, courtesy of Kev , to go see and review a group of musicians known as Fields at one of my fave venues, the Faversham.

So, being the thorough fella that I am, I decide to do a bit of background work, having never heard of Fields before. To myspace I go (my daily companion at work – its easier than talking to people you have nothing in common with) and now I’m a bit worried cos my taste at present involves mostly punky, guitary, indie noise but I’m confronted with hippy, whale sounds recorded at sunset, in a green green field (told you I’d be un-technical). Uh-oh, but, now being an experienced gigger, I figure this may be a different story on the night. I relax and wait.

I’ve recently been in touch with an old family friend (ie the son of my parents friends who we used to holiday with 20 years ago), Glenn, so I asked if he fancied the freebie. He was happy to come along and even drove (a car that had a button rather than a key start – evidently he’s been more affluent than myself over the last 2 decades), so off we go on my first night out with my very old friend, to do my first review – life is good.

I’m rattling, so I’ll get on with the music. First up, in front of the 100 or so of us who have got there so far, is local (Wakefield) band Last Gang, and we’ll have to forget about the first song “Show me How” due to an unfortunate initial bass set-up problem (in fact, speaking with front man Kristian afterwards, he believed this to be the “shittest gig we’ve done”). But, we shall most definitely remember this up-beat, gritty pop, strong guitar lead, foot-tapping, energised set. We were treated to strong vocals, good harmonies, a Franz Ferdinand-esque mid-song breakdown, a flash of original Brit pop in “Kids Rebel”, yee-haa guitaring and even a Billy Joel-esque We Didn’t Start The Fire rant in “Billy”. We even detected a Pixies and Stone Roses influence in “Love + Hate”. If I’m to be critical, I’d love to see more variation when I see them support The Pigeon Detectives next week, but I was left smiling at the end of the set with a tight version of their new single “Beat of Blue”.

Next were the English/Scandinavian five-piece combo known as Fields, who most definitely have the tallest guitarist I have ever seen in my life – he’s huge. Unfortunately I didn’t get hold of a set list so I’m gonna have to be a bit more generic here but my initial myspace fears proved to be unfounded. The room numbers had definitely swelled considerably by the start of their set and I can now understand their appeal.

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