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Tonight opened with Tom Denny from Help! She Can’t Swim’s solo persona Lonely Ghosts in which he shouts and screams smart lyrics in true Help! Style, along to a squeaky clean and unashamedly manufactured backing track and the grungey twangs of a guitar. Songs such as ‘Battleships’ and ‘Predictions’ are so overloaded with energy it obliterates any previous doubts we had about the absence of any bassist or drummer. In fact by the end of the set we have forgotten what their purpose is anyway.
Then on trundles Bearsuit, all fully kitted out in their trademark marching band get-up wielding trumpets and flutes looking as if they are about to launch into a special rendition of ‘Greensleeves’. What actually radiates from the stage is half an hour of intoxicating, colourful arrangements with the correct measures of kitch, rock’n’roll, shouting girls and brooding boys. In songs such as ‘Jupiter Force’ it is hard to know what’s going to happen next and as each number draws to a close the audience has to catch their breath in a room in which the oxygen levels are already at dangerously low levels. Bearsuit encompass some of the qualities of The Go! Team, Arcade Fire and Bikini Kill, however it’s a bit like binging on Haribo i.e after so much it just starts making you feel like you’re gonna puke up all the colours of the rainbow and not be able to look that rosey cheeked boy in the face ever again. The incessant trumpeting does begin to grate a little and it’s not the kind of album which will get much airing from the CD rack once it has resided there for a month. That said, Bearsuit are the school geeks gone cool, their gigs are pure giddy fun and they are example to us all that hours of practice for the school band certainly pays off.
