Photo: Marianne Brits
While the endless stream of reformations continues unabated, Senseless Things could be forgiven in thinking they’d missed out. Having seen so many of their peers reunite, in some cases better and hungrier than the first incarnation, it would be easy to just sit back and let the past remain in the past. After all, it’s not as if all four members haven’t continued to make music albeit with varying degrees of success. However, their parting of ways in 1995 can be laid almost singularly at the behest of a record label who’d pretty much given up on the band. Swayed by the impending rise of Britpop, bands like Senseless Things were cast aside in favour of well…. Cast and their ilk. Which in 2017 probably sounds even more ridiculous now than it did back then.
Watching a band like Slowdive turn their previous existence on its head while the likes of Ride and The Jesus & Mary Chain reaffirm the legacies earned decades ago can only inspire others to regroup. And in the case of Senseless Things, it really is about unfinished business. Not just in sticking two fingers up to a record label that treated them disrespectfully towards their latter years while issuing a retrospective compilation that was anything but representative of the band, but also in ensuring those fans who stuck by them through thick and thin during the temerity of their nine years existence get to say their goodbyes properly. Or at least that was the plan.
But then as a young Steven Patrick Morrissey once proclaimed, “Plans can fall through and so often they do.” And while we’re not saying tonight’s joyous celebration of all things Senseless provided a fittingly deserved finale, one suspects this may not be the last we’ll be hearing from messrs Keds, Harding, Nicholls and Browne.
Returning to their West London roots, it might have been a tad ambitious commandeering the vast Shepherd’s Bush Empire for a one-off reunion show, but with ticket sales moving fast culminating in a sell out on the night, the appetite is most certainly there. Six days earlier they played a warm-up gig in Hull that was equally well attended by an enthusiastic audience, many of whom may have outgrown those Pop Kid t-shirts of yore but became 18 again for one evening only. More importantly, the number of younger faces in the audiences at both shows – many of whom no doubt influenced by “cool” parents and elder siblings – would suggest Senseless Things’ timeless take on punk-tinged pop is finally getting the widespread recognition it warrants.
Indeed, it takes precisely four songs into the set to realise what an incredible singles band Senseless Things were, the chugging ‘Everybody’s Gone’, bratty Buzzcocks inspired ‘Girlfriend’ and Replacements channeling ‘Is It Too Late’ providing a perfect introduction alongside the snappy ‘Come Together’, one of the highlights off the band’s first (and some still say finest) LP ‘Postcard CV’.
Songs like ‘Andi In A Karmann’ and ‘Shoplifting’ may have been recorded nearly thirty years ago yet still manage to sound as vibrant and relevant as ever. Delivered impeccably albeit with the odd false start here and there, Morgan Nicholls’ fingers too fast for his own bass on the latter. Blokes in their forties stagedive with the mischievous smirks of teenagers over half their age, while the moshpit isn’t just confined to the front three rows but the entire dancefloor. It’s a communal event which everyone in Shepherd’s Bush Empire is invited to and we’re gleeful participants one and all.
Two of the band’s biggest hits ‘Easy To Smile’ and ‘Homophobic Asshole’ engineer a wild response, as does Mark Keds and Cass Browne’s Deadcuts bandmate Jerome Alexandre on a blistering version of ‘Hold It Down’. Just as well received are welcome versions of later album tracks ‘Touch Me On The Heath’ and ’16-18-21’, while new single ‘Lost Honey’ revisits Senseless Things tried and tested formula of no holds barred two minute punk flavoured pop incisively.
‘Tangled Lines’ off 1990’s ‘I Can’t Do Anything’ EP and a celebratory blast through debut 45 ‘Too Much Kissing’ complete with impromptu stage invasion complete proceedings for a show that doesn’t so much pave the way for Senseless Things to return on a full time basis, but gives 2017’s stale and overly sanitised music scene a much needed shot in the arm.
Oh how we’ve missed you. Just don’t leave it another 22 years.
