Oceansize

It’s a buzz night in Manchester tonight: The Roadhouse is crammed – it’s buzzing. Tonight some of the hottest bands around are going to be playing. Manchester Music has supported them all over the years and this gig is the culmination of that espousal.

London’s TV Babies are the only non-Mancunian act on display tonight and they really couldn’t have picked a better show to open up. They look like some typically glammed-up wannabes but then they churn and gurgle to some effects with their cherry-haired frontman strutting across the stage wrenching his guitar, creating the lo-fi sludge rock exuding the PA. The slightly disturbing image of a large masked man playing various effects behind a small television screen showing a Channel 5 black ’n’ white C-movie only adds to the peculiar atmosphere already swarming around us.

With almost no warning some prime stoner rock seeps out from stage in the form of Fi-Lo Radio. The trio storm the stage with jumps and kicks and those stop-starts that always get you bouncing that little bit more when they’re done this well, while sounding strangely like an Australian version of QotSA. If this was the second support band…how good were Amplifier going to be? Oh, they were very good. Sounding like Pearl Jam gone good, Amplifier created delicately rolling epics with ease and it was difficult not to shiver as you absorbed the cloaking rhythms and the elegant melodies which swell and climax and bring you down just to take you back there again. Fi-Lo Radio and Amplifier were support bands here, purely by description – it was clear to all the influence they had.

The Roadhouse had been filling up steadily since 9pm and now it was nearing midnight just standing was becoming a chore. That gap in front of the stage was now well filled as every available gap was claimed. You know just what I mean when I speak of an anxious air of expectancy around a band that you know are teetering on the brink of prominence – you know their eminence is to rise sharply in the months to come and here you are, waiting for them. The apprehension that seemed to haunt the band even this year seems to be ebbing, as they seem confident as they stridently announce their arrival. *Oceansize *will make your heart stagger; they will make your eyes curl inward; they will make your very soul glide toward the ceiling. Their distending refrains and vigour-filled anguish are enough to fill a room full of twenty-somethings and make them all sway and bound and, most importantly, appreciate. Oceansize have a certain way with their apparatus that fills a crowd with contentment and occasional glee. It is a rare talent.