London four piece Hidden Charms have a very distinctive sound, a sound that has been done by the likes of The Zombies, The Kinks or any pop-rock R&B group from the 60s. This isn’t a bad thing, in fact it is quite refreshing, as they do it extremely well. It might be a sound of yesteryear but it was still a tight performance with interesting ideas throughout. Their silky guitar solos and strong vocals, reminiscent of The Black Key’s Dan Auerbach, were a real highlight. I may not buy their album, but I would definitely go out of my way to see them at a festival as their music is certain to make everyone listening start grooving.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard begins playing over the PA as Hanni El Khatib and his band of four walk on stage. They go straight into their most recent single, and my favourite song of theirs, emphasizing just how awesome ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’ is to walk on to. The way Hanni is singing/rapping ‘Moonlight’ is direct and powerful just like the Hip-Hop song, and it pumped up an already excited crowd with his energy. He then took time to introduce himself and the band to the crowd, saying he has no idea how he missed this gorgeous city. A deranged scream cries out from the audience and Hanni jokingly says “You can shut the fuck up”, then dedicates the next track (an aggressive punk number) to her. His Los Angeles indie beach rock has a strong punky feel live, which had the younger members of the audience jumping around and shouting the lyrics. Midway through, things seemed to be taken up a notch that was marked by Hanni and his bassist trying to push each other over in a guitar solo (much like the two girls crashing into everyone behind me). The final song had the lights dimmed on stage and focussed on the disco ball above the crowd. In the midst of a guitar solo, Hanni left the stage and headed to the middle of the crowd. This bought on an onslaught of people trying to get a selfie with him whilst he was playing. The drummer then led the encore, raising an already high atmosphere to its peak. Hanni returned on stage to sing, with the rest of the band joining a little way in, making it a raucous and heavy end which went down great with the audience.
It was definitely a great performance by Hanni El Khatib, and I really enjoyed it. I did find though that most of the songs needed the featured guitar solo to take the track to the next level, and it is a sound that has been done many times before, but like Hidden Charms, it was performed with great penache and there are plenty of excellent tracks. So it’s easy to see why Hanni El Khatib has such a huge following.
Iain Lauder