Parklandsway

Just when you're getting bored something like this happens. Laconia set this place on fire and they sound like Seafood with broken hearts. The last time we wrote about them here on DiS it was said that, while they had the rock and roll attitude spot on, it appeared that they'd put the writing of the great songs off for a while. But now we have to confirm that those who live for heart-stopping punk rock can rest easy because Laconia can hardly have ever been more ready to take on the world. The smack their instruments and make as much of a racket as you would expect from countless other bands plying a similar trade.

But Laconia have a secret weapon. It's loud, beautiful and it feels like it's just knocked the earth out of its orbit. Scott Cavagan's vocals give Laconia the kind of edge a nuclear warhead would give you in a fist fight. Imagine a Matt Bellamy not desperate to make sure he displays how expensive his stage school training was. Imagine a young James Dean Bradfield after being dumped by his girlfriend and trying unsucessfully to write songs about how he never cared anyway.

Laconia are the sound of songs that SHOULD be played massive metal monsters being played by an oversensitive indie kid and if there's a single grain of justice in the world they'll soon be playing them to many more people. We should also note that their scary as fuck bassist is wearing a shirt and tie and therefore scores plus points. Uniform rock rocks!

Next up are a band who ply a trade in assured classic guitar pop with a pinch of retro. But don't run away, the Fields are on a wholly different plateau to Travis and their loathsome middle of the road contemporaries. They make proper pop music with jangly guitars and tunes that park their arse inside your head and refuse to move themselves. Just ask anybody here tonight and they'll confirm that ever since they've heard 'You Can Dance' they've struggled to stop singing it to themselves. At times their songs can lift you skywards and have the same aura as anything done by the Bunnymen or Stone Roses. 'Sunblock' is a high-point of the set with an impassioned singer actually looking like he's enjoying himself. Something which is rarer than is healthy these days. I understand the Fields will soon release 'You Can Dance'. Anyone who doesn't attempt to obtain copy should be drowned. Last one to the record shop's a Ricky fan!

Headliners Parklandsway don't really do catchy. Instead they do swampy intense part-prog post-rock freakouts. Very much en vogue in 2002. In fact, it's hard to imagine them having long to wait before the NME are metaphorically masturbating over them. They have all the ingredients: the inpenetrable walls of sound (The Cooper Temple Clause), the thrashing aimless distorted punk element (Black Rebel Motorcylce Club) and the absolutely hysterical haircuts (The Music).

In fact, their haircuts are the funniest seen outside Manchester since Britpop. The only thing that rules out the possibility of one band member actually being Lee Gorton of Alfie fame is the fact that he's not sitting on a stool strumming an accoustic guitar.

Their singer looks like he's walked through a timewarp straight out of the sixties. His fringe is commendable but his sideburns are a crime against humanity, as are the holes in his trousers. Bands such as The Hives and Rocket From the Crypt are reviving uniform-based-rock and why not ?

When punters have paid money to see a band you'd expect them to not be so shoddily dressed. Uniform rock rocks!

On the music front, 'Foundation 54' skitters along like Six by Seven at their very best and sounds like a 90 foot wasp flying into a pylon. Beyond that particular song they struggle. They need to up the pace a little because it's not impossible that one day they could well rock like the proverbial mountain range and scorch their name into the nation's consciousness.
Fashionable ? You bet! Brilliant ? Not yet.