Sunday 28 July 2013

The Thermals at the Garage 23/07/2013

 
I've been to four gigs this week and considering how much I love live music I thought it's about time I started doing gig reviews on here. Not sure I'll be any good at it but hey ho I'll give it a bash nevertheless. First up this week was the Thermals at the Garage in Islington. The Thermals are an indie band from Portaland, Oregon (a city I would LOVE to visit) and a friend of mine describes them as a cross between Brian Molko (from Placebo) and the Cribs which is pretty accurate I'd say. This was the first time I'd ever seen them having only become a fan recently but I knew their energetically charged albums would transition into a loud and rowdy gig, I was not disappointed.

The Garage is a great venue, it's small and has good sound BUT the air con is seriously lacking. Now, I know going to a jumpy around gig on the hottest day of the year isn't the most sensible thing to do and the amount of sweat that was dripping from me afterwards is a testament to that statement but seriously how is it not possible to blow a bit of cold air into a 300 person capacity room? Air issues aside the gig was fantastic, I spent the majority of it jumping around with the boys as they played a selection of songs from across their six albums. 'Personal Life' is my favourite album of theirs so I was happy they busted out hits like 'I Don't Believe You'. Full of gusto, their live performance was very reminiscent of the punk bands I used to watch during my younger, grungier days. For me this is the sort of music I love and whilst my musical taste is quite eclectic I love jumping around like a loon!


Now, let's take a minute to talk about Kathy Foster, the band's bass player. First of all she has the most incredible asymmetric, blonde and black afro. Secondly, she is so effortlessly cool I want to learn how to play bass right this second so I can be just like her. I'm not going to harp on about how great it is to see an amazing female musician because frankly there are plenty of superb girl bands these days but inevitably a lot of the bands I do go to see live are all male so it's nice to see a women rocking out on stage.

The really cool thing about this gig is that it was a Songkick Detour initiative i.e. fans of the bands pledge money for the band to play a gig via the Songkick website. Once enough people have pledged, Songkick find promoters to put on the show and voila gig done! Because I'm nerdy I have my Songkick account linked to my Spotify and Last.fm accounts so I always know when my favourite bands are playing in London.

Have you been to any gigs recently x

Disclaimer: Songkick gifted me with 2 tickets for this gig but I was under no obligation to write about it.
 

 
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2 comments:

  1. Look at you and your exciting life! Glad I get to be a part of it sometimes!

    -Elodie x

    http://www.elle-yeah.com

    ReplyDelete
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