Juxtaposition

A bunch of seventeen year olds shouldn’t be this cocky, or, indeed, this talented. Juxtaposition didn’t waste any time with introductions or asides, instead getting down to the serious business of rocking the Joseph’s Well audience with a blistering psychedelic set.

After enduring so many student bands banging on the same chords it was a big relief to hear James Mallinsons’s intelligent, hypnotic and ringing riffing, propelled forward by some fantastically powerful drumming by his brother Lee. The band members worked well off each another (something in the blood?), and even the notoriously muddy acoustics of Joseph’s Well could not dampen their energy.

There have been a lot of revivals of discredited genres in the last few years – with Belle and Sebastian and co. reinvigorating folk, and Fred Durst and his evil henchmen making it OK for a fresh crop of misguided 13 year olds to like metal (or nu-bollocks). I’m not suggesting Juxtaposition are going to do anything of the sort for psychedelia but the Leeds music scene is all the richer for their unashamed affection for a genre where it’s acceptable to call a song Chutney and for it to be really rather good.