Stagecoach - Camden Barfly, London - 2nd June 2011 (Live Review)
Thursday, 09 June 2011
Written by V O'Hagan
Stagecoach, currently touring the UK to launch their new AA side single ‘Jonah Lomu’/Tony Hawk’, played an incredible gig at the Camden Barfly last Thursday June 2nd.
With songs featured on TV series Skins and their music played on Radio 1 and Radio 6, you may have already been exposed to their playful, catchy tunes and nostalgic-for-the-nineties lyrics. When the band takes to the stage it is worth noting that they don’t seem to fit the stereotype of modern indie hipness. Luke, the frontman, detracts from his floppy haired indie-sailor look by pairing his on-trend nautical t-shirt with a decidedly uncool headband, and one of the band members seems to be dressed for a game of tennis and wielding a mandolin.
They open with a crowd-pleasing little number called ‘Hieroglyphics’. At just over two minutes long it pelts the audience with short bursts of bright and jangly guitars as Luke cries out ‘woo!’ and ‘wah!’ like an electrified monkey, his mouth wide open and his tongue stuck out cartoonishly. The supremely catchy ‘We Got Tazers!’ comes next, complete with a chorus that winds itself around your brain like packing tape. It strikes me during this song that Luke Barham’s voice is reminiscent of Matt Pryor from the Get Up Kids - it’s a sort of raspy, youthful voice that compliments the boyish naiveté of the song lyrics (‘who needs guns when we’ve got tazers? Who needs chess when we’ve got checkers?’).
Luke fizzes onstage like a shaken-up can of Red Bull whilst the mandolin player leaves the stage and starts to play his instrument amongst the crowd. A semi-circle of people form a ring around him, and one boy in the audience wearing a Superman t-shirt looks genuinely confused. To prove their universal appeal, a grey haired lady clutching a Marks and Spencers handbag is having the time of her life. She’s even wearing a Stagecoach t-shirt (and no, she wasn’t a band-member’s mother).
With an intro reminiscent of Weezer’s ‘El Scorcho’ comes the new track ‘Tony Hawke’. As a song dedicated to squandered opportunities it’s quite fitting that its performance sounds a little loose, even purposefully sloppy in places. The overall impression is that this song is meant to sound a little bit…wasted, like a particularly unproductive summer. ‘Headbangers Ball’ is a personal highlight for me and seems to get most of the audience singing along. The mandolin plays a twinkly little melody as Luke ruminates about a time when MTV played music instead of Cribs, and everyone in the room gets the feeling they really do miss Headbangers Ball, even if they’re too young to have ever seen it.
Up next is the second song from their new AA side single, ‘Jonah Lomu’, a punchy little number about an omnipresent school bully, followed by ‘Not Even Giles’, suggesting that if Buffy’s watcher can’t give you any answers then your romantic situation really is fucked.
The band finish up with a total blinder, ‘Good Luck With Your 45’, a touching song that gets the audience swaying as Luke sings the refrain ‘No it’s never gonna change’ with real conviction, although he slightly ruins the emotional impact by accompanying his singing with some gentle pelvic thrusting before perching on top of the amps like a little monkey with an impish grin on his face.
Overall, Stagecoach put on an impressive show. In the same way as Weezer made it ok to hang around your garage with your Kiss posters, Stagecoach are doing the same thing for Tony Hawke videogames and Buffy. I don’t know if it’s possible to make a living out of 90’s nostalgia, but Stagecoach make it perfectly clear that there is a place for genuinely gleeful live music played by a bunch of geeks who aren’t afraid to look stupid jumping up and down in headbands. And hey, of all the weird sights that can be seen past ten o’clock in Camden Town, a mandolinist dressed in sportswear freaking out Superman is probably the best one yet!
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