More about: PVA

“Welcome to the most uncomfortable twenty minutes of your life” grins Phoebe Lunny, singer-slash-guitarist in tonight’s opener Lambrini Girls. It’s a threat that would work better if the crowd wasn’t sat entirely comfortably on their barstools for this exciting stop-off of what’s been billed as a package tour of new artists, but at this stage of a pandemic we can forgive that.

A set of raucously untamed feral punk, it’s like the troublemaking big sister to Phoebe’s other band, Wife Swap USA - a frenetic and fiery blast of thrashy mayhem that takes no shit and blasts through songs at precisely 347 m.p.h. It’s utterly brilliant of course.

Spinning things off in a different direction, Muck Spreader is proper good fun. There’s barely any room to move on the cramped stage for this seven-piece genre-defying band, their set veering from ambient jazz to dark dub via filthy bass riffs. On stage, they manage to look like they’ve dressed as every era of music between them at the same time - frontman Luke Brennan bouncing from foot to foot, sandwiched between someone who looks like he’s beamed in from the future in his boilersuit as he occasionally plays a note on his space guitar and a trumpet player who somehow threads the whole gig together without really looking like he knows where he is. Whatever planet they’re on and whatever they took to get there, we want some and we want it right now.

Intense isn’t a strong enough word to describe Nuha Ruby Ra’s set. The mood in the room changes instantly during a confrontational, visceral performance. Singing into two microphones, strobes blasting into her face, the effect is magnetic. It’s the kind of set that feels like she could be on the cusp of something massive, her blast of theatrical performance over the clash of Noise Rock that blasts out of her backing track. Her upcoming tour with Bambara feels like a good fit, the same hints of gothic darkness and storytelling running through her songs as with the Brooklyn post-punk band. It’s hypnotic, and the huge rush of ovation at the end of her set feels like the release of a pressure cooker. 

Quietly standing on stage and waiting patiently for everyone to notice that they’re ready, headliners PVA are the most unassuming of the four acts tonight. It’s never gonna feel normal sitting down to one of their sets, and tonight’s no different as the house beats surge and rush. You can sense that they’ve definitely used the last year’s enforced absence to polish up all that pure raw potential. They’re never going to be a band that gets embroiled in chart battles, but what they’ve got is more important than that in a way - you can feel them becoming one of the most influential acts of their time and scene instead.  It’s a celebration tonight, a restrained one maybe still, but it’s a banger-fest nonetheless. Good times are coming back.

Find a gallery of each of the bands below: 

More about: PVA