Floors and Walls, the Global Battle of the Bands winners ,were playing at the Black Cat on Saturday night...and they weren’t even top of the bill!
That honour went to People in Planes, probably the venue’s biggest draw since Seth Lakeman played early in the year.
It must have been strange for a band with knocking on a million plays on their Myspace page and with a video directed than none other than Joaquin Phoenix in the bag to play in front of such a small crowd.
Word is getting around about the Black Cat - we’re finding here at The Resident that people are enquiring as to what and where it is - so hopefully it won’t be long before gig nights regularly sell out.
Incidentally, it’s out at the former British Legion Club behind the Capitol Theatre.
It seemed to take a while People in Planes a while to get into their stride, but they soon hit it, ending with Vampires, which will feature on the soundtrack to a movie called Twilight out soon.
Another highlight was Pretty Buildings, a beautiful piano led track that itself wouldn’t be amiss on a movie soundtrack.
PiP are from Wales yet are heavily inspired by American rock and that comes across in the sound and look. Perhaps they might follow in the footsteps of Bush and pick up a bigger following across the Atlantic, as it’s those big rock anthems they do best.
They followed on from the hugely dynamic and entertaining Floors and Walls.
This Brighton-based band won the Global Battle of the Bands with their mix of old school rap and rock (think The Streets’ Mike Skinner fronting a rock band).
For an unsigned act they’re lyrically excellent and come across as a far better band live than they do on record, simply through their pure energy on stage.
Lead singer Alex jumps around like a boxer, and has a great style of singing upwards into his mic much like Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen.
They’ve not got the song which will make them yet, but you sense they have it in them (and if they make a decent chorus for their best song ‘Tracey’ they have it already!)
Kicking off Saturday night was Crawley band Us And Them.
They opened the show in their own style with songs that you just cant help nodding along too. After the first song frontman Jack Betteridge ordered everyone to stand up, get to the front of the stage and enjoy yourselves.. to which most of the crowd did.
Us and Them never fail to dissapoint and put on a show that ticked all the right boxes.
Up next were Press To Meco. It was The Resident’s own loss that we arrived too late to catch their set, but Rachael Green of The Black Cat said: “I will try not to be too biased but they are just so amazingly good it is scary!
“How a three piece band can make so much noise is beyond me. You sometimes have to check that it is not a 12 piece band up there.
“They closed their set with their track Athenian which really got the crowd going, expect big things from these guys.”
Go on, go to Myspace and check these out...
People in Place - Pretty Buildings; Floors and Walls - Tracey; Press to Meco - Anthenian
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