When I think of bands from Philadelphia I’m duty-bound to mention Marah. A band I saw play a show so good in this city almost 20 years ago and immediately formed a band with my brother on the way home. It lasted the 60 miles we drove (although he did price up vans at one point in the journey).
I’d wager that it’s a possibility that Catbite were not even born at that point, but nonetheless, the Philly five-piece are here to enjoy their first time in Nottingham. Their ska punk sound is infectious too, and their energy is exemplified by their touring keyboard player – singer Britney Luna usually does the job – who is as jumpy as a box of frogs.
Songs like “Call Your Bluff” are fun too. “Scratch Me Up” even comes with its own actions, and “Excuse Me Miss” welds itself to your consciousness after the first chorus.
A sugar rush of a half an hour. I’m too old to tour in a ska punk band, but if it was 20 years ago…..
New Bedford’s A Wilhelm Scream were onto a winner before they even played a note. Coming out to Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” will do that for a band around here to be truthful.
Billed as melodic hardcore, the five-piece bundles of energy (“you probably think I do nose drugs” laughs singer Nuno Pereira, before hastily adding that he doesn’t) and they are also slightly different from the norm. There’s not many punk bands with a bass solo, but they’ve got one on “GimmeTheShakes” there’s even fewer with the groove of “Congratulations”.
It also needs saying that AWS might have the Best Song titles that side of the pond. “I Wipe My Ass With Showbiz” is good enough, but it pales into insignificance when compared to “Me vs. Morrissey in the Pretentiousness Contest (The Ladder Match)” thankfully as he should in any fight, the Godawful Smiths frontman appears to come off worse.
Indeed, there were very few I would back in a fight against A Wilhelm scream, just occasionally there is a main Maiden-style double guitar solo, and the last one “The King Is Dead” is heavier than usual.
They have Pereira explains, “sweated in your country many times” and I imagine it every time they do, A Wilhelm Scream gives it everything they have. They know no other way. As Belinda might have said when it comes to the half an hour on stage: they know what it is worth …..
About six weeks ago, I saw Chuck Ragan play a solo set. At the end of the review I wrote this: “This is not a choice, Chuck Ragan absolutely needs to do this, that much is certain. Never was the phrase three chords and the truth more relevant than it was here.”
While here, he is anything but acoustic, the sentiment remains the same. He’s across the other side of the stage from me, MV finds itself in front of the other singer in the band Chris Cresswell (of The Flatliners), but whenever Chuck sings, the veins are visible on his neck, as if he is straining every sinew to pull the notes out.
But to the matter at hand, the reason that we are here. Simply, Florida’s finest punk band are celebrating 30 years.
The unfussy way they arrive on stage, with no backdrop and no fanfare i strangely in keeping with the way they conducted themselves throughout that time. This was abandoned for whom at the music mattered, for whom the songs counted – and they merrily reel off 23 one after the other here.
Mostly what they do, is best exemplified by “A Flight and a Crash” all raw emotion and melody.
“Turn The Dial” from the last album and sung originally by Chris Wollard, who no longer tours with the band, sees Cresswell take centre stage and the brilliant “Habitual” are highlights, while “Keep It Together” comes from a similar troubadour type place as Chuck’s solo stuff.
They are due to release brand new album soon, and they play a couple of them. “Menace” Is perhaps the most immediate, while “Remnants” is slower and maybe showcases a more “mature” sound.
There is a real feeling of camaraderie, both on stage, off it and also amongst the bands. “Freightliner”, for example, is dedicated to Catbite and “Killing Time” to A Wilhelm Scream.
“Manual” puts their tremendous skill to the fore, the vocal interplay between Ragan and Cresswell, is excellent, while the fantastic “Drag My Body” is surely what Springsteen would sound like, if he made a punk record.
There is no encore – that would be showbiz and that would never do – instead there is just a hurtle to the finish with “Turnstile” and “Trusty Chords” – the latter’s hook line of “I hate this place but I love these chords” only rings half true. Hot Water Music have, for thirty years given off the idea that they would rather be nowhere else than on stages, playing to packed audiences, while never quite hitting the mainstream.
That, you imagine, is exactly how they like it.
