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The Local: Glitches at the Carling Academy

The Glitches this Saturday became the first student band to headline the Carling Academy, and they deserved it. Rocking through their short set, the band satisfied the crowded room with a danceable energy and professional intensity at the same time. The biggest student band for the Academy, and also the biggest gig to date for the band. ‘We played a couple of balls before but they weren’t really our gigs’ says Robbie, the lead singer. ‘I felt my nerves of steel starting to crack’, concedes Ben, the band’s huge bassist. ‘There was no promotion from the Academy at all either’ says Robbie. The website didn’t even work, leading to a Canadian Christian rock band. It wouldn’t make much difference anyway, Ben admits, ‘we only have seventy friends on myspace’. Not a bad achievement then to fill up the Academy.The four finalists came together at the start of their second year. ‘Robbie gave me an EP of his old band and it was shit’ says Mike, the guitarist. Robbie laughs. ‘We decided to give him a chance though’, said Mike, grinning. ‘Mike and I were already in a Wadham band’, chips in Ben. ‘We started playing in what is now The Glitches in secret without telling the old band. We cheated on our last band to start this one – The reaction when he found out was kinda the same’. The band began life as The Cheltenham Average, morphing into The Glitches during the summer and improving ever since. ‘We had a natural aversion to getting involved with Imsoc’, says Robbie. ‘It’s all a bit inbred’, agreed Ben. ‘A lot of bands like being an Oxford band, but we don’t want to be an Oxford band, we want to be a UK band’, says Robbie. The band certainly are ambitious: they’ve signed a fifteen-month contract which will see them devoting next year to the band, recording and touring.Able support for the band tonight was provided by Figment, another band with Wadham connections and the potential to go far. Hailing from Bristol, they played an energetic punky kind of electric indie that got the crowd going for the main event. The Glitches set was dominated by driving pop rhythms, not dissimilar from mainstream indie bands but executed with skill and feeling. My personal favourite was the more mellow ‘January to June’, but guitarist Mike cited the hilariously titled ‘Papua New Guinea’s got a brand new bag’ as a favorite, and the band agreed on its seminal significance for them. Our interview was cut short by the entry of drummer, James, furious after being left outside by his bandmates. Meeting the band after their biggest triumph to date only the confirmed the impression gained in the audience: this is band that’ll go much further than Oxford.– By Michael Bennett

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