Joe Scott's take on....Fenech Soler & Chew Lips "Live It Loud" at Lancaster Library

As a single, 26 year old man looking to take stock and assess where you are in your life, there won’t be many more thought-provoking & spotlight-shining situations than finding yourself shuffling around a library in an unfamiliar town , at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, pretending to leaf through a book chronicling 21st century pop-culture paintings, trying desperately to be blasé and ignore the fact that the vast majority of other attendees are sixth-form age . Once you realise that the only drinks on offer are cans of Fanta and that there’s a solid hour of electro-indie by a a group you’ve never heard of to get through before the band you came to see are on , this will only be magnified .

It is of course an acknowledged ‘funny age’ – as the oft-relayed list of luminaries who died aged 27 ( Kurt Cobain , Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, The Elephant Man...all producing some quality music before leaving us prematurley....except The Doors, obviously. bbdum-dum-tsh ) will attest - being unavoidably conflicted all-day-everyday between looking back & forward is such a constant headache that it makes you do weird things, make stupid plans and then (even whilst doing them) think “why?”.


On taking my place about ten feet from the stage, as an encapsulation of these divergent mental paths , this scenario really came into its own ; am I too young to be thinking “look at this tit’s haircut...and a scarf? Indoors?! Behave.” Or am I in fact too old to be thinking I can legitimately be interested enough to attend concerts by ‘up and coming’ bands and treat music as anything other than the soundtrack to badly done Sky Sports montages ?

Margaret Thatcher is once said to have twattishly remarked
“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure”
Which, aside from the hardly-worth-mentioning abhorrent self-preservation & look-after-yourself preference for greed-trophy,mines-bigger-than-yours, individualistic car travel over the well-intentioned, available-to-all (although invariably unreliable & , frankly , poor) community focused public transport is hardly the kind of rhetoric to inspire much clarity or pride in a person in that age bracket.
The omens augured ill when during a pre-gig drink we were interrupted by a 50 something hen-party dressed as French peasants and asked to donate underwear to fulfil one of their ‘only night out of the decade’ challenges. This is a hot-bed of hennery – as anyone who has been on a weekend train bound for Blackpool will verify ; the only more common passenger stereotype than ‘turkey-necked-over-tanned-horrors-in-risqué-T-Shirts’ is ‘ear-ringed-meff-sitting-drinking-Carling-pretending-to-be-heading-to-Blackpool-just-so-they-can-indulge-in-a-fleeting-bit-of-banter-with-hen-parties-and-say-“well, i might see you if you pop out later than luv!”’. And by these (admittedly base-level) standards the group we encountered were well mannered if somewhat barking up a tree containing the two people least likely to actually engage in such banter it would be possible to imagine.

Anyway. After a seemingly interminable awkward shuffle about the dark, sparsely populated library, the first band came on. Fenech Soler, valiantly flying the flag as surely the only band to fight out of Kings Cliffe, Northants .

Straightaway their enthusiasm and excitement at playing the gig won people over & , helped by the superb acoustics the unusaul venue offered, their set was overall a massive success. A difficult to nail down but always interesting sound, mixing – to my ears – bits of Michael Jackson, Klaxons, 13-era-Blur & M83 , played whilst dressed as MGMT going to fancy-dress party as Generation Terrorist-period Manics worked surprisingly well in such idiosyncratic surroundings (one fringe benefit of attending a gig where the average age comes in at 15 is that it affords a rare full view of the stage for a short-arse like myself), with the keyboards, synths & bass especially being on the mark. The stand-out tune was definitely ‘Lies’ although there was very little drop-off in quality throughout.

‘Battlefields’ too could be easily imagined “tearing up” dancefloors in indie clubs given enough plays and although the lyrics never really stretched the imagination very far & a couple of the songs could have done with a bit of pruning , with the strongest parts compacted & tightened to really harden them as sure hits, they should have a good chance of doing well for themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0takBpMWtM

The second act, Chew Lips, despite a fairly shocking name was the band (their song ‘seven’ in particular) who ‘inspired’ this venture & they entered the tiny stage after a thankfully brief change-over period. A similar sound (almost as if someone organising the event had put some thought into the pairing...) but immediately more confident , cool & savvy , less naively excited & ebullient than the support , belying the fact that they have been garnering the sort of ‘credible’ heat that would usually make me massively sceptical , they barely paused in a classy, sexy & brilliantly-paced 40 minute demonstration of electro-pop.
To say that the singer ‘Tigs’ is the focus of attention when the trio are on stage would be a bit like a scout singling out Matt Le Tissier as “one to watch” in Southampton’s early 90s line-ups. “Multi-instrumentalists” Will Sanderson and James Watkins certainly play their part in filling the perfectly judged Yeah Yeah Yeahs default backing setting with regular twists & enough-but-not-too-many electo flourishes to deserve not to be ignored but they may as well be two gargoyle book-ends to the stage robotically jabbing at a xylophone such is the relative command of the stage the singer takes. Photos don't really do justice to the level of “cant take your eyes off her” engendered as she strutted & intoned – managing a fairly difficult mixture of vulnerability & confidence & basically creating an irresistible vibe not unlike Scarlett Johansson playing Debbie Harry as a primly well-spoken bookish English hipster in sparkly denim hotpants. A winning look I think we can all agree, especially framed faded blue neon lights .

The extra quality on display was reflected in the more ambiguous & involving lyrics , which showed up particularly well in the more measured, glacial efforts – Play Together & Solo especially sounding as good as anything out there at the moment.

The new single Karen is more pop-orientated with the techno/electro dyed fleks hidden subtly in a head of glossy , sleek hair. The tune is better than that description , honestly ;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQsYiSr58aU
So, Chew Lips a band that deserve to really kick on and make an impact.

One positive way of answering the conundrum mentioned earlier when taking position pre-gig this is to resolve that , really, you’re never too young to adopt a sneeringly dismissive attitude to badly turned out people – and never too old to attribute unrealistic & unjustifiable importance to essentially disposable forms of entertainment.

And the bus was dead on time to take us back to Morecambe.