There’s no better way to celebrate the end of yet another week of term than by going on a blind gig. And by that I mean going to a gig without knowing what any of the music will sound like. Luckily for me the Comma Club’s Sunflower Gig held at my favourite pub, the Jericho Tavern, actually had quite a few decent acts performing, with The Asbhies, aka The Great Hereafter wowing the whole crowd with their 60s inflected songs – but more about them later. For now I have to confess that arriving fashionably late to the gig I missed the first act, Government Man. Sadly this band made up of Oxford students don’t have any music online yet, but judging by the photo on their facebook page, these guys could be pretty rocking. Anyone with a photo of Jimi Hendrix is a man/woman/band after my own heart.
I did however manage to catch Clarissa Pabi reading some of her sexually explicit poetry – off her phone – accompanied by some arpeggiated guitar. She moulds language into odd distorted shapes which get a few laughs and appreciative sounds from the crowd but her voice mostly gets buried in the audience’s chitchatter. Her heavily rhythmic poetry has its own flow but it gets entangled with the guitarist who seems to be playing to a different rhythm. Still its nice to know that poetry is being brought out of its stuffy cupboard and out into an interactive setting.
Wooden Chairs and Arthur Sawbridge – who plays around with violin and loop pedal – provide soothing tones to prep the audience for the standout act, The Ashbies, who I am still convinced should have been headlining. These guys perform a seamlessly tight set and their Beatles-esque songs have the whole crowd swinging their hips like it’s 1969. Their harmonies are smooth enough to rival Grizzly Bear’s and their amazing drummer makes the performance even more epic. Although I was quite disappointed to find out that lead singer and guitarist, Will Taylor, was not in fact Paul McCartney’s son – someone’s idea of a sick joke – his mesmerising voice that has a Nick Drake-esque quality is essentially the cherry on top of this musical delight. It’s gems like these that make blind-gigging so worth it. Not wishing to bore you too much with my sickly sweet rant, I offer you the interview with the Ashbies that I only wish I’d been brave enough to ask for.
Finally, Babeshadow and then Spector – the headline act – bring the night to a nice indie-fuelled close but I still wish that Ashbies had had the last word. If the prospect of seeing a load of indie bands isn’t enough to coax you to the next event then how about the fact that the whole cast of ‘I love my life as a dickhead’ were there? By no means am I trying to deter you from going to any Comma Club events as the night was a definite success, I just feel that the disproportionate amount of undercut hairstyles in the room needs to be rectified. So get off your ass and head over to their next show to help free the Comma Club of their reputation of shameless pretentiousness.
