REVIEW - CURATORS / VERSE METRICS / WE CAME FROM THE NORTH / FINN LEMARINEL - OPIUM, EDINBURGH - 1/6/13
Kev, below is a review of a gig that you were to lazy to go to. It was very good. Will the hyperlinks still work once you copy and paste this from the email? Can you spell check it for me, also fixing my there, their and they're's as i still can't get my head around that particular linguistic mystery? You might want to 'like' the people in question also and do that Facebook linky thing to there pages. You can leave this Italic bit in or out of the final edit, i don't care either way.
Last night i went to a gig in a time machine named Opium. The smell, sounds, tastes (terrible tap beer) and a floor that's so sticky it'll take your shoes right of your feet were all exactly as i remember for the hours/days/weeks/months spent rocking out hard back at the turn of the century. The live music on offer upstairs on the other hand was a completely different beast from the usual Opium fair
Already a few songs into his set as i arrived was the quite frankly immense Finn LeMarinel. One man, who also plays in the Glasgow band Trapped in Kansas, playing quiet, intricate and thoughtfully composed songs on his acoustic. I loved the percussive way he used every part of his guitar to create a sound that seemed to captivate the room and had people tiptoeing to the bar so as not to interrupt. I urge you to go on bandcamp and part with four of your hard earned pounds on his album. If you are uber cheap however, he did a pretty sweet live session on Vic Galloways show last year thats well worth a listen.
Next up were the instrumentalists We Came From The North. This bad irked me so much. They clearly have great musicianship and know how to write a great tune but there sound, in my opinion, did not justify there not being a vocalist. I've checked on Gumtree and i can't find an advert for a vocalist on there from them so i'll assume this act of madness is deliberate. Oh well each to there own i guess, just not a band for me i'm afraid. If you fancy yourself as a vocalist and need music to practice to you can pick up the demos at a price of your choosing here.
The third band of the night and touring partners to Finn LeMarinel were Glasgow's Verse Metrics. A pretty amazing band that i'm sure will tickle the fancy of any fans of well written alternative guitary rock with interesting time signatures, lovely vocals and noodly bits. That's the best i can come up with i'm afraid, rubbish isn't it? Check them out though. They have a few well received releases available on bandcamp that, as i am finding out in my hungover state, reward repeat listening. On a side not they had a guitar amp and pedal that paid homage to Sieb Dykstra, Q: How cool is that? A: Pretty damn cool.
The final band of the evening were Edinburgh's mighty barbershop beasts Curators. Any review on this site will be oddly self serving so i will leave it at, they are awesome, always have been and if you don't check them out live or download there immense new recordor the now free of charge previous release you clearly have problems in your headspace.
There you have it, Nelson Savage.
