Terris

Must life be so unfair that we have a legal system AND a national lottery ? AND a national lottery ??? Let us punish the guilty and reward the randomly chosen. Must life be so unfair that we have Reef AND Richard Ashcroft ??

Reef are guilty and so must be punished , but Richard fucking Ashcroft ?!?!?! Success for a display of no evident talent ???

But , more importantly , must life be so unfair that Terris touring partners Coldplay are shot to fame when they should simply be shot , yet Terris remain very much an underground band.

When it comes to commentary on the human condition Terris have shown more than any other bands to have attempted to do so. They've proved that those in alternative music, fans and journalists alike, are a bunch of fickle, presumptuously judgmental, ignorant fuckers.

Even those who's admiration for Terris remains must concede the awful nature of last April's debut single proper 'Cannibal Kids' but tonight Terris are back to prove a point. Cannibalism is the name of the game, the food chain, survival of the fittest and Coldplay are the target.

A contest is not on the chewed up saliva drenched cards. Whereas Coldplay sing "I drew a line for you / Oh what a thing to do / It was all yellow ", Terris sing " I am the engineer of my own disgust / Security oils the cogs and coils of this mechanical lust ."

But not tonight , tonight Gavin Goodwin is in downright fucking angry mode , delivering his message to the doubters : "It's about time somebody shut you up / It's about time that your strings were cut"

Set opener 'White Gold Way' is testament to the direction the forthcoming album is taking. With it's pulsing analogue basslines and defunked Incubus style guitars and a middle-eight that could've been stolen from Matt Bellamy. But, thank the fucking lord, Gavin Goodwin DOESN'T sound like Thom Yorke. Gavin Goodwin's voice has none of the technical flowered-up pretentious indulgent Jeff Buckley bullshit of pretty much every other guitar band on the planet but is captivating all the same. Never before has a man who sounds like he gargles ashtrays and has swallowed a cheesegrater sung so

beautifully.

Terris are King Adora without the glamour or sex appeal but with some much needed intelligence. Thus 'Lost October' is their 'Bionic' all chugging, sluggish guitars and screamed vocals and, the comeback single, 'Fabricated Lunacy' is their 'Big Isn't Beautiful'. It redefines Terris in the eyes of all detractors with it's Stone-Roses heyday John Squire riffage and Rolling Stones organ and its simple sentiment of "What can you do to me now that you're through with me ?"

It's this remarkable simplicity that has seen the incomprehensible growth of the Terris fanbase since their tour with C*ay. Perhaps Windvane's opening line is a dig at Coldplay ("Scratching your sculpture, your colour coded culture ."). Terris focus on relationship break-ups as much as , say , Hefner but they do it with a poetic brilliance not seen since Morrissey.

The fans assembled here have certainly picked up on their anthems too with 'Searching for the Switches', reluctantly accepting its position as "the singalong", summons a moshing frenzy and convenes a singalong of "I ain't a boy, I am a bomb / Oh man , I've been searching for the switches just to turn myself on ."

But Terris have found that switch in set closer "Deliverance". Terris' first truly magnificent song. Expanding on the usual Stone Roses riffage and Nirvana power formula that makes up much of Terris' set , Gavin is dripping in sweat , gazing into the lights and flailing his limbs at invisible demons before hurling himself to the ground and violently assaulting the stage and the monitor.

His eyes bulge out of his head as he screams one last time before stumbling backwards mumbling "gotta let go". Alun Bound's guitar growls at a painfully loud level, Owen Matthews beats the living daylights out of his drums as if they insulted his mother. The basslines climb into the sky as Neil Dugmore throws his cigarette to the ground and Goodwin collapses like it's only the power of the music that keeps him alive and moving.

Eventually he brings himself back up onto his feet and it's all over.

Maybe if they grow afros, get a ridiculously long name and sing about drugs they'll be hitting the big time next year and we won't be the only ones in possession of the Terris secret. But let's hope not.

Must life be unfair ? Yeah, cos this time we're the lucky ones.