This gig took place on the 8/3/2024
Roots and tradition can sometimes be a heavy yoke to bear. There’s not really much you can do about the music that you inherit from your parents. Even if you hated it during your youth thanks to chronic overplaying or even a more misguided resentment towards the authority in your life, as you grow older you might start to grow fonder of the things that you were once quite ambivalent about in your roots.
Be that the places and communities you inhabited, the people you’d speak to on a regular basis or the art you’d consume, either by seeking it out yourself or that which had been funnelled to you.
With the age that affords time for reflection also comes the ability to be more critical, and it may well be that you look back on with more pointed disdain, despite the obvious and unavoidable sentimentalism that it may trigger within you.
It was International Womens’ Day and I was very pleased I’d managed to snag a ticket to The Freakshow’s EP launch down at The Cloak and Dagger on Cheltenham Road. A historic queer venue and a night that promised an anarchic alt-folk-punk freakazoid main event seemed too good to turn down.
I got to The Cloak and spoke to Will at the door for a bit, his accomplice marked me with a biro and I admitted to him I was supposed to be getting on a bus to London later that night. He looked at me like I was mad, which is fair enough.
When I walked downstairs I was happy to see another familiar face – none other than the famous Oskar Smith on the C&D bar, where else? We exchanged conversation, money and alcohol before I was drawn away by the beautiful tones of Sarah Ann Rée.
Sarah Ann Rée
Adorned by lampshades, bunting and other oddball décor Rée took to the revamped Cloak stage. She settled into her set alongside a traditional three piece band of guitar, bass and drums.
Immediately the instrumentation was sparse and measured, she’d set up with a guitar tone that rang so brightly round the dim room, with her first song opening up into this ghostly flourish of a chorus.
Particularly impressive was the drummer’s work – he had the chemistry and mutual understanding with Rée to be able to dictate the energy of the music back to her, who in turn led gorgeous renditions of a couple of her early songs.
The third track was Sarah’s own treatment of Big Yellow Taxi, paying an ode to one of the great tributaries to the folk tradition that Sarah finds herself meandering through. The crowd sang the Oooh-Baa-Baa-Baa-Baa hook for Rée owing to the lack of a backing vocalist in a moment of proper collective Bristol spirit.
She jokes that her music isn’t all that upbeat – and it’s not. Rather they’re extremely dramatic readings of what feel like very down to earth struggles. Sarah’s capable of transforming these day to day introspections into grand stories that cut through to all of us, simple stories of love and loss.
Sarah’s vocals were a key standout, able to hit every emotional apex in her lyrics like she was writing her stories directly into my soul.
She closes with Love Is A Parallax, singing a siren’s song over shuffling drums. At the same the lush instrumentation rose and fell in accompaniment to those storytelling crescendos. The interplay between her and the band’s work was key setting the mood in the room that night. It was tight and well rehearsed, commanding the attention of the room to every dying note.
FFO: Suzanne Vega, Hozier, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Courtney Barnett
The Scuttlers
Post-genre lunatics The Scuttlers were up next, fronted by the unequivocally genius Myer U Clark.
They started gradually, Myer with pint in one hand, microphone in the other, eyes covered by his ridiculous sunglasses. And with a steady beat behind him he started into a deliciously theatrical opening…
You could’ve been anything that you wanted to be
And it’s not too late to change…
For those unfamiliar with Myer U Clark, it’s worth taking an aside to explain a little about him and The Scuttlers.
Myer’s solo work is that of an alt-folky singer songwriter with a strong connection to nature and its beauties, and even in his on stage performances of these songs he comes across as this diminutive figure. But with The Scuttlers, he, and the band, become utterly larger than life.
With the Bugsy Malone opening Myer flips the script on us straight away, a jaunty, didactic song that underpins so much of what makes him brilliant – Give a little love/And it all comes back to you
The band have to get their due too. They leap into the next few songs unfettered. Complex jazzy drum patterns that prick your ears up and basslines that hypnotise.
The guitarist… good god. During a decidedly heavy part of the Weird Fishes jam his fingers start going at lightning speed to keep up with the rising drums and bass. Myer skits and skates around on stage, having doffed his sunglasses now fully immersed in the controlled chaos that is The Scuttlers.
Myer does at times give in to his cowboy American influences – during one song in particular he puts on a guitar and half heartedly pretends to play along with a tune, perhaps feeling the call of that folk singer-songwriter at heart.
Myer announced that they had time for just one more song – a ridiculous version of One Way Or Another – in which Myer yelps and cries more than he sings, really. It felt like half a mockery of the new wave and post-punk as a whole, as Myer descended into growls for the outro. Still the band stayed true throughout, their finely tuned technical excellence a total juxtaposition to Myer’s loose vocals.
As a whole the vision is unique not because of a rejection of genres but because of a comprehensive acceptance and championing of a variety of traditions – from Radiohead to theatrical vaudeville music, arrhythmic post-punk to guitar toting cowboy country. This melting pot along with a ferocious live energy makes The Scuttlers an absolute must watch.
I snagged a setlist from Myer after the show but it was barely intelligible and I must have lost it on my journey to London I’m sad to say. Not that it would’ve yielded that much info.
It was a fabulous show from top to bottom – with a band at the top of their game technically and a front man who can reach out and connect to his audience with ease.
FFO: CAN , LCD Soundsytem, The Kinks, The Fall
I made myself at home at the Cloak bar and drank tequila with Oskar while we waited for the headliners.
The Freakshow
With a set of fairy wings on each of their shoulders everyone’s favourite girlies took to the stage late in the evening. Their EP launched earlier that day – The Freakshow Vol, 1.
Its cover art features each member cocooned in their own little bubbles, an image that almost betrays the sense of community and collectivism that they instil in their music and their audience. Still it makes a point of how they’ve brought each of their powerful individual stories to the group, and together made something far more than a sum of their parts.
They kicked off with an uptempo jangler that had this country and western spirit behind it. Jude crooned the hook over the top – Well we may or may not be happy to see you… but there was nothing but smiles all round as they took an opportunity to introduce an especially bouncy crowd to the rest of the anarchic collective.
Once the formalities were out of the way they went into Nothing But Time – the wistful opening track of their EP. Borrowing a phrase from the chorus of This Must Be The Place, Nothing But Time zeroes in on the very homely, reassuring vibe its title suggests.
Ayesha stands proud at the front alongside Jude and Julia, she swats the bongos while Julia hollers over Jude’s lilting lead vocals. Their loose, carefree performance has a very grounding effect.
Elsewhere on Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow the girlies take this all American psychedelic maelstrom and transform it entirely into this English indie folk tune.
Their musical palate is all round such a modern, forward thinking punk interpretation of folk and Americana music that manifests as one part outrageous, fast and loose confrontation, and one part tender, joyous melancholia. If St. Trinians had a band, it would probably look a bit like this.
As we got to the climax of the set they started reeling off the hits.
Anya steps up to the mic for STFUB! – their first single – a lofi punk stomp with a firecracker hook.
Then, they played Girlies. Jude sang slow and soulful.
All I want to be/Is one of the girlies
It’s alright, it’s okay with me/If I don’t understand, you know I try
It all became so clear – no matter their traditions or their background they carry with them such an infectious collectivist spirit. Sometimes it even goes past that, they feel like they are a family, welcoming to all and utterly acceptant. That is what The Freakshow is all about.
The Freakshow’s debut EP – The Freakshow Vol. 1 – is out now on Spotify! You can catch them again at Strangebrew soon.
FFO: Le Tigre, Jake Bugg, The Libertines, Belle & Sebastien, Sleater-Kinney
HAZE TRANSMISSIONS 