THE BUG CLUB
Tramshed, Cardiff - 28th February 2025
Support: Holiday Ghosts, The Family Battenberg
Unsurprisingly the Tramshed was rammed for Wales' new favourite band. The Bug Club have some a long way in just the last couple of years. Now signed to legendary American indie label Sub Pop, their jaunty, often wry and occasionally surreal brand of punk-pop has crossed the Atlantic and made Caldicot's hottest property a global phenomenon.
Well, OK, maybe not quite that, but they can still sell out a Cardiff show in seconds... Tonight's show opened with Cardiff newbies The Family Battenberg. Thing is, new they may be, but their reputation is such that an awful lot of the crowd were more than happy to get there early to catch them. And for good reason - they are a lot of fun. I love their brand of garagey rock 'n' roll (with a touch of psych thrown in) and I expect to be seeing a lot more of them in the future.
Holiday Ghosts are based in the Cornish town of Falmouth, which means, as a proud Devonian, I'm obliged to hate them! But I can't as they are also rather good. They too are purveyors of fine garage rock, though theirs has far more of a 60s vibe. Not a bad thing at all. Their drummer also stands up to play, which is always a delight to see. They probably eat their scones all wrong, but I still might check out their records on this evidence...
As for the Bug Club - well there's very little they can do wrong to be fair. Their set consisted of all but one song from current album 'The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System' and a smattering of back catalogue faves, including Marriage, Little Coy Space Boy, It's Art, Suck It and Clapping In Time.
They're hardly short of material, given they tend to release an album every year, so each show is always going to be different. The only downside of this one was the sound, which really affected the vocals. As MrsRobster remarked, one of the great attractions of the Bug Club is their lyrics. So it's a shame they were almost indecipherable in the rather muddy mix. But the energy they always exhibit onstage made up for it, at least a little.
I fucking love this performance! The drummer, by the way, is Tom Rees, singer and guitarist with Cardiff's Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard…
No comments:
Post a Comment