The Beat Surrender

I’m gonna start by talking about the venue on this one, as The Mixing Tin to me has always been a bar that is tucked away somewhat in the underbelly of a shopping centre in Leeds and has always been better known for doing reasonably priced food rather than a hotbed of live music.

Change is in the air though and if any city is suddenly embracing live music and doing all it can to accommodate the recent creative outpourings of its inhabitants, then Leeds is most definitely that City. The Mixing Tin has fallen in line with that and reinvented itself as a bar/venue.

It fits it perfectly as well, the low ceiling and small nature of the bar anyway make for a decent atmosphere when you only have fifty people in, the band can see the whites of their audience’s eyes and the sound is surprisingly decent. Thumbs up for another edition to the Leeds scene from me.

First up tonight are Undercut, a five piece from Bristol who clearly have designs on breaking through into the big time. This is probably driven along by the lead-singer, a man who on what I’ve witnessed tonight, would love to be a rock-star. The stage isn’t raised in the Mixing Tin (Alister joked about stage stepping rather than diving at this point) so he steps off the stage and onto the floor as often as he can to get nearer to the audience. It all strikes you as a bit strange as he’s distanced from the band and centres attention on himself rather than the group dynamic.

Because of this it means that his vocals become even more key to the songs, the most successful of their set tonight are the songs such as the new single Doing Fine which are harder, faster and you get a bit of heart in the vocals. The least successful are the ones that see them drift into ballad territory; at this point they become fairly dreary.

Most people aren’t here to see Undercut or the headliners though (didn’t catch their name I’m afraid and wasn’t that bothered on this performance), no the majority of people here tonight (and its up to around 100 by the time they come on) are here to see up and coming local (North Yorks) band The Call.

As such people push nearer to the front and the atmosphere lifts further, you can sense expectation within people as well as the feeling that a lot of people here tonight have seen them before and have come back for second or third helpings…..which is a good sign for people like us seeing them for the first time.

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