The Beat Surrender

Think this must be about the third week running that I’ve headed to this venue for a gig, the previous week had seen me take in the Shout Out Louds in the main room, this gig though was in the slightly smaller middle room (for anyone who has been and has the faintest idea what I’m talking about).

Now this was a gig I had been looking forward to for a while, so much so that I’d given up my weekly game of 8 aside football (or depending how rough it gets you could call it cageball at times!). In case you are wondering the side that my mate and me played for lost 3-1 and we are definitely putting it down to us two missing the game!

The reason I was looking forward to it was two fold. I’d never seen Clearlake live despite being a fan of the band since the debut album Lido, but more importantly, The Crimea produced possibly the best debut album of 2005 for me, with the excellent Tragedy Rocks.

First up though we had three problems to overcome. The first was pouring our glass pint of lager into one of those horrible plastic ones, the second was finding a place at the bar with a good view of the bands. The final and hardest one was standing through the first band onstage, all I can tell you is that they were American, they were dull and did try to tell us their name (could have been Luger?) but we couldn’t decipher it.

Having overcome the respective obstacles with only a minor head on the beer it was onto Clearlake. They headed on stage minus one member (still recruiting as far as I know), announced that their set was being cut short as time was tight and that the lead singer was feeling really unwell with a very bad sore throat.

From those less than promising omens, they then burst forward and delivered a top notch six song set that included a storming version of recent single Good Clean Fun and my particular favourite It’s Getting Late Outside. The crowd were responsive and the band left the stage with appreciative clapping for company.

The Crimea arrive on stage in a sea of bubbles and with one very obscure picture as the backdrop on their set, to be fair though they don’t even need that to slay the crowd tonight. As if the songs aren’t strong enough anyway on their own merits, they play with a confidence and style that makes them look like veterans of this sort of thing. In Davey MacManus the band have a perfect frontman, he can sing (good start but not essential), he has stage presence (useful!) but above all else he has charisma that helps to get across the very human side to the band and their music.

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