Artist: The Presidents Of The USA
Support: Straight Lines
Venue: HMV Forum, Kentish Town
Date: 16th March 2012
What can I say? I love this band! Not only do I love them, but I love the fact that this tour involved them playing their whole self-titled album in full. We once worked out that every song (minus two I think) contains an animal reference. Interesting fact eh? We got kitties, bo-weevils, chickens, spiders, elephants, salamanders, piranhas and even 30ft smurfs (they count right?). It’s like Noah’s Ark the album!
Warming up for this legendary occasion were welsh boys Straight Lines. A strange choice for support I thought being as the Presidents are very much known for their humour and Straight Lines are def not the kind boys you would expect to be singing a song about a spider in a dune buggy or peaches.
This being said though, Straight Lines are clearly a great band. Very more on the lines of bands such as Twin Atlantic these boys play some superb rock and, although being quite quiet on stage, seemed to impress the crowd who were very much, I’d imagine, not their usual audience. Not many young audience members in tonight and, I think during a between band discussion, we concluded would be the exactly same crowd we would see if Everclear ever played over here again. Stand out tracks for me were the catchy ‘All My Friends Have Joined The Army’ and ‘Set Me On Fire & Feed Me To The Wolves’.
Now for tonight’s main event. With a voice-over apologising for the mix up and that “The Wombles will not be appearing tonight” you can pretty much get an idea of the fun and games to come. Teasing us at first, the band played a few other tracks from there discography including ‘Mach 5’ & ‘Volcano’ before getting in to tonights special event of playing their entire first album from start to finish. Legendary doesn’t even come close to this moment.
From track one ‘Kitty’ the crowd went crazy. You have never heard so many people Meowing in unison ever; it was a glorious sight. Obviously the hit singles ‘Lump’, ‘Dune Buggy’ and ‘Peaches’ were amazing but also the opportunity to fully appreciate tracks such as ‘Feather Pluckin’ & ‘Body’ made this even more special. It’s not often you can enjoy the story of a frog hoping under a hi-fi system and drying up it’s all it’s live glory. The band were as fresh as ever and it was like they had never been away. I hope to dear god they decide to never go away ever again!
‘Back Porch’, ‘Naked & Famous’, ‘Bo-Weevil’, it was just back to back to back classics! With the welcome addition of Buggles cover ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, I don’t think it was possible for this to have been any better. Did I enjoy this gig? I couldn’t say yes enough on this page to accurately represent it. I think I’ll sum it up with a Presidents lyric “totally feather plucking insane!”.
