The Beat Surrender

So many times over the years gigs have been the best hangover cure I could think of, I’d had a heavy night in Leeds for the live sky game against our Yorkshire rivals the previous afternoon / evening, I’d got up midway through the morning to busy myself for another day / nighter, tried to eat food and not made the most convincing job of it and it wasn’t until anhour or so before this gig that I dared to attempt my first beer of the day.

So all in all I’m not feeling too good, as much as I was enjoying the day so far I was really looking to this gig to clear my head and kick start my evening. On leaving a couple of the best bars in Leeds (hats off to Oporto and Jake’s Bar) we then found it lashing it down outside, quick walk to the cash machine (out of order) and a hailed taxi later and we finally made it up to The Faversham tucked away nicely in the middle of the university campus.

The Faversham is a fairly small venue, modern in design, in that it’s nearer to a trendy wine bar than it is a spit and sawdust pub, despite the student surroundings. It can get pretty rammed for both gigs and the accompanying club nights and from what I can remember of the Dogs gig I’d seen there a few months earlier it has a pretty decent atmosphere. No such chances tonight though as we walked in, we could have been forgiven for thinking that it had been cancelled as much of the tour had gone that way earlier in the week due to an illness that had struck The Modern’s singer down.

The venue was sparsely populated and even as the first band took to the stage nobody had ventured out of the snugs and corners to fill the dance-floor in front of the stage. Redcarsgofaster though are a band that demand attention, a singer with jerky movements and arresting vocals that are insistent rather than well sung, plenty of endeavour and energy from the rest of the band and true to form my head was clearing (the vodka and cokes that were flying down my neck might have helped).

So The Modern were left with the unenviable task of following a very good support band, not something that is ever easy for the most confident of bands, never mind one that is in it’s relative infancy and who have made this the first gig of the tour to be back on after the aforementioned illness. On record they come across as confident electro-eighties revivalists with a penchant for sharp dress and either sharper synth and basslines.

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