It’s a dark and dismal evening that looms over the gorgeous surroundings of Canterbury on an unusually busy Monday evening. Like, who goes out on a Monday evening? Isn’t that a day where you are suffering from the quintessential post-weekend blues, or are suffering from a stress induced headache from a long day at work? Well no one at the Lady Luck was told this! Even more staggeringly, is that the show sold out within a couple of days. A steady fact that the promoter must be chuffed to pieces with, as shows in Canterbury this early on in the week are never usually well attended.
Playing to a half full venue already is the opening band Fairview. Hailing from Bristol, these chaps drove a long way to the show and look fairly surprised to see this many people in attendance to see them, which is a heart warming thing to see. Fairview have some decent musical ideas in the vein of Sunny Day Real Estate mixed with the shoegaze influenced leanings of the new Title Fight material. Unfortunately, the sound levels really do not do them any justice, and there were times where the drumming was just not keeping up with the tempo of the guitar section. Which is a shame because these guys have a lot of promise, but they need a decent amount of time to really find themselves and truly find their sound.
Coloured In are next on, and they are in similar suit to how Fairview suffered with the sound issues. Their performance is musically tighter, but the stage presence (ironically it is a floor show) is somewhat subdued. It’s more so a case of letting the music do the talking, which is absolutely fine. Whilst in a similar musical style to the previous band, they have more of a grungier influence – and are reminiscent of more modern grunge or alternative bands like Superheaven, or Heat. Whilst a fairly decent performance, their set was unfortunately nothing to really shout home about.
However the energy changes when main support band Land Speed take the floor (and practically cover various parts of it). Fronted by Tim Lawrence (Hildamay / Bayeaux), their angular and jagged form of punk rock which is gloriously upbeat and encapsulates the greatest and rawest elements of Polar Bear Club, and Iron Chic. This was the point where the audience was starting to become a little livelier, but alas the frustration of not being able to hear the vocals and one of the guitars was a real grievance. If this was not the case, this most certainly could have been the performance of the evening.
But then it was Creeper‘s time to shine. The venue at this point is absolute rammed from front to back, and even to the sides by the merch table! Now recently there has been a lot of buzz surrounding Creeper, so we were especially curious to see if the hype was certainly justified. Their performance was relatively pleasing and surprising in the respect they sounded more so like early AFI, mixed with the Mondo Bizarro-era Ramones, and the tiniest hints of Murder City Devils, and Samhain. But when you throw all these elements together – you have Creeper. A most pleasant, warming, friendly, and lively bunch of people who manage to pull of a sterling show regardless of the limited floor space, and once again… sound level problems (this time you could not really hear the guitars at all). Vocalist Will Gould looks to have some bright promise as a solid frontman for the future, which is made all the more real by the constant smile on his face and the extreme gratitude he shows the crowd for ‘coming out to a punk rock show on a dark Monday evening in Canterbury’. And rightly so! This crowd absolutely loves them, and are continuously singing along during all the right parts.
Whilst they sailed through their short but sweet set, we were not overly convinced as to why they are being touted as the next big thing – even though the key ingredients are there. But the impression one gets is that this venue is not big enough for them, and their local (and national) popularity is already prominent enough to warrant them a bigger stage on a bigger scale. Maybe in time this will be the case, but right now Creeper are on the right path to really stepping up their game. The most important part of all this speculation right now is what will happen when the debut album drops, that will be the time to truly convince everyone of their true worth and substance. For now we are treated to a taster of what is to come, and that is sufficient enough to whet our appetites – regardless of bad sound, and the brevity of their set. Just do not bet against them any time soon, these guys are certainly ones to watch for 2016.
