Secret Motorbikes support Deathcats with their third gig of the year; busy year.
Considering how good their stand up routine is, we half believe they have sat in a room writing out punch line after punch line or as tonight would suggest practice their Australian/Kiwi accents.
While Deathcats stopped playing two years ago, Chris Harvie and Scott Whitehill have been busy with their respective projects Shredd and Home$lice, however since the M.I.A. front man has returned Fuzzkill Records rightly so built their Christmas party around the briefly reunited garage band.
The Australasian sun has taken a toll one the once youthful frontman of Deathcats, however after James McGarragle takes his shirt off he stops looking like Wes Scantlin from Puddle of Mudd and looks like Mike Pike, funny comparison while running through of Paranoid and Sabbath type riff of ‘Danny Dyer’.
The second song is ‘DREAMZ’, still one of my favourite guitar tracks, and someone must have seen the smile taking over my face and lifted me up as the impressively consistent wave of crowd surfing begins and last to well after the band have played.
One notable surfer was Secret Motorbikes bassist, whose efforts are made extra impressive as McGarragle states, “you don’t normally see people with mortgages crowd surfing”.
With an album and couple of EPs to pull from its tracks like ‘Liquid Gold’, ‘Sprint’ and ‘You’ that stand as the strongest.
The skilful rewrite of ‘DREAMZ’ in ‘You’ is welcome to give the “ohh ohh ohh” vocal melodies a second airing of the hook, one can only wonder what tunes they could still make.
The points of reference may have aged a bit in two years (DIIV, Thee Oh Sees, etc.) and Glasgow bands seem more focused, but the conviction to have fun and try the best to destroy the Old Hairdressers by means of playing the songs for everything they are worth is superb.
Speakers toppling, guitars getting wrecked, microphones breaking (and being stolen jakey bastard crowd) and the top less guitarist and bassist being absorbed into the crowd and surfed around the room.
Songs and riffs extend, moves are pulled and everything ends with ‘Saturday Night Golden Retriever’, waiting for summer that harks back to those heady days of 2013-14; we never knew we had it so good.
You can catch Deathcats again before hibernation again on the 27th at Broadcast. And you should all go.
Words: Paul Choi
Rave Child 