Let’s get it straight : Liverpool Sound City has the reputation to be shit. It’s my first time in Liverpool : the city and the festival.
It seems to run okay at first, I grab my pass and go to Zeligs for the first bands of the night, Anoraak and Team Ghost. They’re playing in a restaurant and the festival organisers haven’t even bothered to get rid of the tables, which makes the setting slightly weird. But the two French bands don’t seem to mind and play two great sets. Anoraak’s disco-pop tunes are super catchy and hours after the gig, I still have all the little keyboard melodies in my mind = good stuff. Team Ghost like to play loud, VERY LOUD. My ears suffered from that at Offset last year, so I’ve come prepared with ear plugs. The band have more members now and the sound is heavy but they’re absolutely brilliant. They were my favourite band at The Great Escape last year and tonight I remember why. Of course, you think of M83 a few times but Nicolas Fromageau’s charisma is fascinating and you can easily lose yourself (in a good way) in the sonic cold-wave songs. Best band of the day.
After that, I wander around the streets where most of the venues are located. Narrow dark streets with brick buildings, a big fat cliché but hey, that’s what it looks like! The thing that really strikes me there is that you can hear all the bands playing in the venues from outside. That’s very unusual. With all the noise restrictions now, you only hear the gig when you are actually in the basement. But in Liverpool, you walk in the street and it’s very easy to find the venue as you can hear the music hundreds of yards away. It creates an unusual feeling of excitement, like something really punk and interesting is happening in this city. If it’s like this the rest of the year, you can see why so many bands have been formed in Liverpool. Wandering in these streets as a teenagers hearing all this music must be so exciting. And I do feel like a teenager going from one venue to another hoping to find the next big thing.
I catch the end of Veronica Falls’ set. I had never seen them before (and yet I pretend to write on an indie blog) and I’m happily surprised. I’ve listened to their stuff and liked it but was always annoyed by all this reverb on the songs, you can barely hear the voice on them. But live, none of that crap is there, the voices are clear and sexy and you realise what great pop songs these guys have hidden behind all the reverb. They make me think a bit of the early days of Sons and Daughters but with less drama. This is the great surprise of the festival.
Then off to the famous Shipping Forecast, a very nice little venue for the Canadian Blast Party. I see the end of Said The Whale but the singer is wearing an Olly Murs hat = very bad and they flirt a bit too much with the emo border for me. Ben would probably have loved them. Winter Gloves take the stage with all their keyboards and skinny jeans. They sound alright but I’m a bit disappointed, I was looking forward to see them as their tracks on myspace are pretty nice but it doesn’t work for me tonight.
Last stop at the Screnadelica Gallery to check out some really amazing gig posters, check out these illustrators : Luke Drozd, Adam Pobiak and Stephen Chan.
So, Liverpool Sound City is trying hard to make this festival nice but it’s too early after Great Escape, we’ve seen the bands we really wanted to see there in packed venues. Here you get around 50-70 people per show, so even if the venues are great and the city pretty cool, there isn’t the excitement you find in Brighton. Maybe the organisers should think about doing this event at another time of the year rather than between the Great Escape and Primavera which are both so much more attractive.
Beachy Head by Veronica Falls
