The sold out Latest Music Bar were treated to an evening celebrating, in a typical eccentric and dramatic way, the release of Brighton band CLOWwNS debut album The Artful Execution of Macho Bimbo. They have been gaining a monumental reputation for bizarre and energetic live show that lives long in the memory, and have been winning a further audience by getting their recent singles ‘Trousers’ and ‘She Says I’m A Clown’ played on BBC 6Music.
Starting the show was Brighton’s very own Prince Vaseline. Having not heard their music before, I feared the very worst as they began with the slow and quiet first song ‘Morning’ (the first song on their recent debut “mini-album” A Naturally Coloured Pleasure) which was barely was audible over the Friday night crowd mutterings. But then the music kicked up a gear, with the band erupting into a blissful sound which grabbed the audience and won their attention immediately. The band consists of Marc Beaty on bass, Evan Reinhold on drums, Eleanor Whittle on Moog/Casio/backing vocals and Max Erie on guitar/lead vocals who together produced a powerful and enthralling sound which lets the audience get lost in the musical wonderment Prince Vaseline. Max’s slightly nervous stage presence was soon lost once the music started, prevailing with his brilliant speak-sing style (similar to Ian Curtis if he had listened to a lot of The Smiths) and becoming the technician of a psychedelic jam as he flung his guitar around to create a whiney distortion effect. It’s hard to put a label on Prince Vaseline’s sound – is it Setreolab collaborating with Bombay Bicycle Club, Pond but with less psychotropic influence or a better thought out The Soronprfbs (from the film Frank)? All I know is with songs like ‘Radio On’, ‘Leaves’ and ‘Hungry Dog’, I will be listening to them an awful lot in the future.
After a raffle in the interlude for CLOWwNS goodies, the audience started a “We Want CLOWwNS” chant which built the atmosphere back up for the performance. You could have been tricked into thinking the CLOWwNS were toying with the audience as they began with only lead singer Miles Heathfield singing a delicate tune with guitarist Andrew Claridge on acoustic. Then with the other two band members sneaking on stage, Andrew picked up an electric guitar, and burst into an energy filled riff with Miles swinging the microphone Roger Daltery style. Damo Waters was in his usual form and gave a dazzling performance on the drums whilst wearing some swimming googles, as well as coming out with lots of surreal anecdotes in the lull between tracks, which was needed at times as their relentless vigour was a little draining. CLOWwNS music is quite a concoction – imagine the stage presence of Freddie Mercury with David Bowie’s oddities, playing Franz Ferdinand sounding songs whilst on acid which have been written and produced by a Talking Heads era David Byrne. Even though there was constant loud talking, the majority of the audience dancing seemed to get evermore erratic as the songs went by, replicating the energy the band was emitting. The talk of the town is not wrong – CLOWwNs are indeed brilliant at what they do and delivered a mighty memorable show that will win them more and more fans with each performance.
Iain Lauder
Website: clowwns.com
Facebook: facebook.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/