Six By Seven

At the Manchester Roadhouse the drinks are expensive, although the bands are usually pretty cheap. Perhaps that's why no one has really bothered to come tonight, leaving the venue fairly sparsely populated. More than likely though, band nights with a higher than average residue of northern soul and indie britpop circa 1991 just don't sell so well as they used to. It's freshness, it's vibrancy - well, it just doesn't exist within the genre anymore. That's why perhaps we should just leave it alone, let it die, and walk on to bigger and better things.

Manchester based Groucho open tonight with an apology for a performance, suffering from technical difficulties, un-tuned guitars and a sever lack of talent. While the band’s musicians sound like a remnant from the early '90s shitpop era, the lead singer whines in a manner equal to The Bluetones in the modern day, which as anyone who has listened to 'Science and Nature' will tell you, is pretty shit. There is no room for droning banality in music. There is no reason for Groucho to be here and there is certainly no reason I can see to listen to them. Words of advice - evolve or die.

One bag of chips.

The Favours haven’t got the greatest or most original sound I’ve ever heard but this is the age of egos, where charisma, charm and Jagger-esque cockiness can get you anywhere (case in example – The Hives). It would be unnatural not to relate the female fronted band from Hull to pre-millennium indie-fem rockers Elastica, Sleeper or Kinicke and perhaps they’ve come ten years too late to jump on fore-mentioned bandwagon. I can’t help feeling a NYC Yeah Yeah Yeahs style vibe coming through the sharply dressed singers’ sharpened voice, that given a little care and nurture (money, drugs, a stylist or two) could become part of a British NYC counter-attack. We shall see.

Two bags of chips.

Having lost two of the original five-piece band, Six by Seven are left stripped to the very barest of essentials: a drummer, a keyboard/synth player and a singer/songwriter/guitarist. Despite their depleted situation, 6x7 have managed to keep control over their early songs and new material alike and tonight they produce a performance comparable to any of their former selves. Although the current release 'Bochum (Light Up My Life)' gets a lukewarm reception from portions of the crowd, tonight most people are left looking for more, not totally fulfilled by the strict one hour set. The passion, aggression and pure emotive expression that 6x7 showed in the past in epic songs such as 'Eat Junk Become Junk' remains to a tuned-down extent in the band in their current form. At times Chris Olley and James Flower turn to each other with gleaming smiles that exude the thrill the band still retain from performing on stage. The question remains; can 6x7 continue to perform after such a severe series of setbacks - loosing members, underselling records and being dropped from their former label? Sadly, it seems this could be one of the last times we will be able to catch 6x7 before they fade away, having never quite made it as far as we believed they could have.

Three bags of chips.