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2005 has been the year that ‘angular’ became the music journalist’s adjective du jour. Franz, Bloc Party, The Rakes – a fiver says the next review you read of any of those acts will have the ‘A’ word in there somewhere. So what does this mean, apart from maybe that Santa should bring us all a thesaurus for Christmas? Well, perhaps that after all the superfantastisch jerky rock that’s come our way this year, what we all need right now is a gonzo feast of sea shanties, wistful northern pop and songs about blokes called Simon turning into plants. It could only be The Coral, of course.
But before that there’s the small matter of some young pretenders to Liverpool’s indie throne. The Little Flames have spent the year touring with the likes of Nine Black Alps and Arctic Monkeys and tonight they take a break from recording their debut album to put on a sexy strut of a show. Making like a beatnik Baccarach, they mine the dark glamour of bands such as the Velvet Underground, as they stalk through lush, slow burning tracks that explode in a garage-y squall of a chorus. And like Lou Reed and co, they have a glacially cool singer who, when she’s not making all the boys hot under the collar with her sultry, Grace Slick-style vocals, says only two words (“Thank you”) throughout the whole gig. It might be just nerves, but it gives the band the kind of unapproachable coolness which is often missing from the current guerrilla-gigging, free for all, go-back-to-the-drummer’s-house-for-a-cuppa music scene. We like!
Things take an altogether darker turn as The Coral emerge onto the stage through a mist of dry ice to launch into ‘Spanish Main’, looking like the ghostly pirates from oldie horror flick, The Fog. This, combined with the way that the band’s shadows are projected 15 feet high on the backdrop for half their performance, and you can’t help thinking that all they need is Christopher Lee in a set of plastic fangs to complete the Hammer horror set-up.
No amount of visual menace can detract from the sunny pop melodies of their songs, however. The calypso-tinged ‘In The Morning’ – one of the best singles of the year – is wonderful, and is only rivalled by ‘Dreaming Of You’ in opening up a sea of frantic heads and fists down at the front. Before this though, the audience are strangely subdued, and it’s not until ‘Bill McCai’ that they get warmed up – something James Skelly seems to recognise, as he finishes the song with a shout of "That’s more like it!" After that, it’s a shoo-in, and by the time the band leave, after a storming encore which includes, natch, the obligatory sea shanty ‘Shadows Fall’, they’ve confirmed their place as the ’Pool’s fave local boys done good.
