This Aint Vegas

_“It’s about phone calls and conversations…” _ ‘Promotion’, This Aint Vegas

That’s exactly how today’s trip to some faraway land known as ‘Not London’ begins: a telephone call to Oxford Tube HQ, a.k.a. a guy in a featureless office – bland magnolia meets peeling-away skirting board from 1978 – with a bus timetable. He’s chipper, all the same: “What time are you travelling?” We tell him. “Oh, no problem. Just show up and pay the driver.” So we do, and we’re off.

Leaving London feels as euphorically indescribable as handing in that final piece of coursework as a stressed 18-year-old student, or meeting a strict workplace deadline – the lifting of weight from the shoulders is such that one damn near floats, gravity failing all around, to the bus’s ceiling. Grey alleys and gum-splattered pavements slowly give way to fields of green and trees that aren’t surrounded by concrete and car tyres. We’re playing a recent Kranky release and sipping over-priced apple juice, the bottle warming gently in the sun; sun that only reveals itself when we’re a good ten miles from Holland Park roundabout. Yes, today is going to be good.

Well, it’d better be: we’ve been waiting for this day, for this line up, for what feels like forever (it’s been about two weeks). The Wheatsheaf has hosted many a fine show before now, but the trio of This Aint Vegas, their Jealous Records labelmates That Fucking Tank and London-based punks of no little frenzied enthusiasm, October All Over, proverbially moistened our loins like few others. There’s an unknown in the ranks, too, as organisers Vacuous Pop have slipped local instrumental act And No Star between OAO and TFT. Pints are downed as we await the opening of the doors – a favourite ale of the day, Old Tosser, is carried up the stairs to the waiting corridor. Minutes tick slower than usual, then: bingo, house, the whole shebang. We’re in.

October All Over have performed before these eyes and ears too many a time to count on digits currently employed as glass grippers, but they're yet to become too familar, or dull even; tonight, they purposefully collapse come the closing song, guitarist Graham falling forwards, instrument pointing before him like a Medieval pike, bodies shrinking backwards. There’s melody in these four, for sure, but this evening’s performance is one of aggression and attitude; spiky and scattershot, derailed and ablaze. Bassist Sophie’s so often the catalyst for the band’s softer side to become apparent, but now even she seems possessed by the rabid demons of rock and roll, her usually mellow vocals enriched with malevolence and menace. It’s a YES way to begin proceedings, and we await the element of mystery with no little awe for what precedes it.

And No Star are discussed after their set: “If you live in Oxford, you see loads of these bands,” says one local, not being entirely kind. The four-piece that play moments before DiS stumbles into barside chat are accomplished and some – their weirdly wayward riffs and polyrhythms jarring and clashing and causing sparks to fly like swifts on the wind and never less that warmly received by those down the front – but it’s a sound that really has been heard a dozen-dozen times before. Take a pinch of The Edmund Fitzgerald and a liberal splash of Youthmovie-like intricacies and you’re roughly in the right musical neighbourhood. Entertaining, then, but you might not want to take them home just yet.

One band – or a duo, rather – that your mother would certainly disapprove of is Leeds’ That Fucking Tank, and not purely because of their ugly moniker. This pair of former Kill Yourself men now deploy titanic sludge-metal riffs via one baritone guitar and beastly drum beats straight from the barking loony end of the Load roster. On paper it’s an electrifying mix, and it’s proved to be exactly that on past encounters; tonight, though, despite their bare-chested best efforts, they leave many a person in attendance, DiS included, a little limp. Their rocking is top-notch, but the fever that’s so apparent on stage doesn’t flood from it, and thus we’re all a little under impressed. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t pack our dancing shoes, though; these buses don’t give you a great deal of luggage space.

By now our vision’s a little blurry and our ears are stinging; at least one band has left – they’ve a train to catch – and our enthusiasm for further rocking has, sadly, dwindled rather. Still, one can’t ask for much better a pick-me-up than a This Aint Vegas set, and the Sunderland four-piece deliver. Yes, they’re forever tarred with a brush that leaves such adjectives as ‘jerky’ and ‘angular’ in its wake, but the application of such apparent clichés is absolutely reasonable considering their penchant for convenient pigeonhole avoidance. It’s not that they are jerky or angular, particularly, but that their mix of pop, punk and a whole lot else is something that leaves the would-be writer – the would-be critic – both mesmerised and superbly muddled, unable to resort to anything but the above terms. Without our brain’s prior say-so, our feet our tapping furiously and soon we’re rocking, literally: back and forth on heels hardened by an afternoon spent wandering Oxford’s not-London streets. (Even its pedestrianised shopping area seems a whole lot sweeter than the multiple capital equivalents. Perhaps it’s because here you can smell something other than exhaust fumes on the air?) We don’t want to leave come the last song we hear them play – namely the aforementioned ‘Promotion’ – but we must: it’s not the Oxford to London journey that bothers us, but the twin night buses that await once we’re back at the arse-end of Oxford Street. Departing slightly early leaves us feeling a little down after such a day, but time waits for no man and our bellies have had their ale fill; now, our heads are reaping the questionable rewards.

“…taxi fares and organisation!”

Well, if only: that way we’d have stuck around ‘til our insides were crawling out onto the student-peppered pavements of this University city.

Live shot of TAV - if you're seeing it - by Rachel Silver Rocket