The tannoy of Concorde 2 booms out, “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Vintage Trouble.” For many it’s payday and LA’s Vintage Trouble is the perfect excuse to indulge one’s pay packets.

The venue is completely sold out and could have sold out five times over. Tickets were sold out way back in April and for good reason too. This band have operated on the peripheral of the music scene for many years now and their true testament to rock’n’roll comes in their live performances as opposed to on record.

With a sound that harks back to 70s blues-infused funk and soul, the band dress with an early 40s style sensibility. It is an array of three-piece suits and Albert chains as if somebody gave Jesse James a wide smiling persona and showed him how he can dance properly.

Concorde 2 is an awkward venue. It’s long in shape and if not treated properly by the band or sound technicians it can really hold the sound ransom. Vintage Trouble saw the pros and cons of this tonight. Their music wheezed from the PA and gave up around the middle of the room, or fell out of the open doors at the side, or just got caught within itself, leaving the instruments hard to differentiate. The skittish guitar solos of ‘Run Like The River’ and ‘Nancy Lee’ should be annihilating you. When wrapped in gravelled distortion the tone should snap at you but tonight it possesses the confidence of a kitten committing itself to water. However, this is not due to a lack of effort from frontman Ty Taylor and his accomplices. Not at all.

Where Vintage Trouble really made Concorde 2 work for them was in how they utilised the space. Where the sound failed to utilise anything but the front few rows, Taylor made use of the entirety of the venue. What he demonstrated to the crowd throughout the hour-and-a-half-long set was an absolute masterclass in showmanship. After dropping off the stage during ‘Blues Hand Me Down’ into the bay of bodies at the front, he made his way to the far end of the venue to bring about the climax of the song. His voice strung around the venue from the rear end of the room giving those who may have felt slightly shunned due to the lack of volume a sense of reconciliation. If it was not enough doing it just the once, he finished ‘Pelvis Pusher’ doing the same; making the same journey to the back before crowd surfing the best part of 50 meters to return to the stage.

Vintage Trouble are formidable when it comes to setting moods. When cast under ice blue lighting the band toy with resounding love ballads such as ‘Another Man’s Words’ – a song about the misery of heart break. Their songs have an appeal to a mass audience largely because they discuss universal feelings in an explicit fashion. This really came to life after giving reference to the recurring nightmare of the EU referendum. Rather than offering an opinion the band gave a tribute to the union that the British public need to rediscover. Ty Taylor made acknowledgment to this within ‘Doin What You Were Doin’ – it captured a unique mood and regardless of the frivolities of the other songs it stood out as the most poignant song of the set. Not so much because of the actual sound but because of the message embedded within it and how it brought about a resounding sense of faith to the crowd.

It was a real double-edged sword for Vintage Trouble. Where the atrocious sound attempted to suck character out of the performance, the band built a wall of arms in their defense. This will stand in the forefront of the audience’s mind rather than the sound I hope. What they will remember are the messages of optimism embedded within their songs. A reminder that regardless of your opinion we are all human after all – a touching statement in a time of need for Britain.
Tom Churchill

Website: http://vintagetrouble.com
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