Utopia FM, Sunderland’s student radio station, has one jewel in it’s crown every broadcast - and that jewel is Utopia Live. Billing itself as a “new music station” Utopia always gets hold of a handful of decent local acts and plays them across the airwaves… and then at the end of the broadcast they all come together and play a gig, which we in turn broadcast. Hence Utopia Live. Us Utopia folk love it. Well, I say ‘us’, this was my first broadcast and thus my first Utopia Live. Although everyone else was very excited!
I attended the gig with my very enthusiastic partner in (radio)crime, Daniel…
Daniel went on to get incredibly drunk, so much so that after spilling someones cider-n-black he ran to the bar and replaced it with a cider-n-double vodka? But he was dancing around having a great time like only he can do!
First up we had electro-folk band The Catchpennies:
I wasn’t sure if it was worth coming to see the opening acts, because the opening ones hadn’t gathered much airtime, but I’m glad I came to see The Catchpennies. They were decent live. A strange concoction of people, who all looked VERY young and pretty nervous on stage, but they were all rather talented. Especially the lead singer who played the banjo! The banjo! I couldn’t believe it, I only know the banjo from “when I’m cleaning windows” so this definitely gave them an individual element. I was a big fan of what they were doing anyway. Listening to their stuff on Myspace I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that they were good live, but are maybe not so good otherwise.
After that was A Garden Story:
A Garden Story are from Sunderland. Let’s hope Sunderland’s musical future doesn’t lie in their hands because they weren’t upto much. Very average indeed. To me they sounded very American and weren’t at all original. I don’t want to say much more because I don’t want to rip them too much. I’m sure they’ll have some fans in sunny Sunderland but they weren’t my cup of tea in any way, shape or form.
The third offering of the night was Newcastle based, The Mosaics:
The Mosaics were breathtaking. I’m almost never satisfied with live bands because I don’t know their songs and usually there’s a reason I’ve never heard of them (excuse the ignorance, but to a general extent its true). The Mosaics however were different. I’ve played a few of their songs in my Utopia broadcasts, and they’ve remained memorable but not necessarily enjoyable. But from the word go they had my attention. Their sound is very much like Coldplay meets Keane (I hate Keane by the way)… but the lead singer is just incredible. I urge you to go and check out their myspace page http://www.myspace.com/mosaicmusic1 and listen to “Runner”. If you don’t like that then you probably won’t enjoy the rest of their stuff, but to me they’re simply brilliant. Their was a point in their set where they were having difficulty with the bass guitar I think, and whilst the rest of the band tried to sort it out lead singer Dan McLew played his acoustic guitar and sang a song by himself… and even that was brilliant. I need to find other words to describe them, but all you need to know is they are so, so good. Go listen to “Runner”… NOW.
Following The Mosaics was Odd Shaped Head:
Knowing that there were still two more acts to come after The Mosaics I was kind of like “whoa, maybe there is actual real quality in local gigs - especially if The Mosaics are third from finish - these next two bands must be bloody good!”. And you know what? They weren’t. Maybe I was still trying to digest the magic of The Mosaics but Odd Shaped Head, like A Garden Story, did absolutely nothing for me. Very run-of-the-mill indie music. Not my sort of thing at all really.
To finish the night off was Seven Heroes, who will be playing Newcastle Evolution Festival next week:
Everyone at Utopia has been raving about Seven Heroes for a while. Especially “Start It Again” and “Don’t Call” which are two songs you can find on their myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/sevenheroes. Seven Heroes were too much about melody and not enough substances for my liking. For example they had a song which raved “lets start a revolution!” and not once did they follow that up with any reason as to why. Just kind of “hey, you know what we should do that would be jolly good! a revolution! yeah man this music is upbeat it’ll get us in the mood!”. It’s the exact kind of music that dumbs people down rather than enlightening them. “Don’t Call” sounds like a song from Byker Grove or Saved by the Bell. But, to their credit, they’re a well polished band with catchy songs. I needed more than that though.
Utopia’s own Ian Gordan hosted Utopia Live, and also took all these photos which I’ve stolen from his Facebook… well played to him.
Overall: great, cheap night. The Mosaics were outstanding. The Catchpennies and Seven Heroes held my attention, but the other two weren’t that great at all. I got real drunk and that’s always good. Not quite as drunk as Daniel mind. Anyway, go check out the Mosaics myspace page.
That is all.
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