Tonight at Broadcast, The Lapelles launch new double A side ‘Snakehips / Seventeen’, to an appropriately wild and enthusiastic crowd.
The young East Kilbride band are a five-piece who draw on the legacy of noughties garage rock revival, post-punk and post-Britpop; uproarious, infectious and unreserved, they channel the best of unabashed rock ’n’ rollers such as The Vaccines.
Through the gig, I’m reminded of the band’s video for ‘Seventeen’, where a camera spins endlessly round a room at a party filled with flashing blue, red and green lights, sometimes moving so fast that the background is a blur, and sometimes slowing to appreciate a single detail.
Arriving a couple of minutes into the set, the atmosphere is similarly disorientating, the crowd bouncing and waving manically, while the stage is lit in a woozy dark blue, so the party feeling is contrasted with a more psychedelic air.
When ‘Seventeen’ plays, its pounding toms and fierce opening riff are a boisterous and self-assured assault, but the song transcends the lad rock that inspires it with its about-turn at the bridge, into an eerie goth-rock thriller, with its “I’m a creep and you’re a freak/ and no-one knows the talk we speak” refrain.
‘Snakehips’ shows another side to the band, and it seems to channel Blondie in a number of differing ways: the surf rock guitar of ‘Atomic’, the lyrical infatuation with the telephone from ‘Call Me’ and the major-key pop rock of ‘Picture This’.
It’s this blend of genre and homage to past indie rockers that makes this outfit more than just the soundtrack to a frenzied night out.
Words: Tony Boardman
Rave Child 