Resilience and perseverance, that’s what it’s all about..
It’s not just that tonight’s bands Midway Still and Dealing With Damage are mostly comprised of guys with more than 30 years of recording/gigging history to their names; they also have to deal with malfunctioning guitar pedals, spilt drinks and even a rogue jolt of electricity from a gremlin-stricken bass guitar rig. It’s the wrong way, to get shocked, if you wanna rock n’ roll. (No, truly, the pleasure is mine).
Credit to both bands involved, though -they take it all very much in their stride, with the aid of plenty of between-song mockery from good friends in the crowd. Hey, it’s all good character building
Dealing With Damage gigs don’t come around as often as we’d like (damned real-life responsibilities!), but boy, are they worth the wait. These guys play what we shall call ‘smartcore’; melodic post-hardcore with SOMETHING WORTHWHILE TO SAY. Tonight, ‘We Make Bombs To Feel Safe’ is delivered with an extra shot of venom, newie ‘Head Full Of Feedback’ instantly batters its way into everyone’s subconscious, and ‘Bigots Vs The Mad Professor’ rages as least twice as hard as it does on record. Oh, and new bassist Owen Cox absolutely knocks it out of the park. Come see these guys, you couldn’t possibly regret it.
Midway Still are one of those bands that make me wish I’d been born a good ten years earlier, not least as I may well have caught them supporting Nirvana on the latter’s ‘Nevermind’ UK tour. Imagine the melodies of prime Snuff with the fuzzed-up guitars of Dinosaur Jr, delivered with the confidence you’d expect of a band with a set of wall-to-wall bangers. Clearly stoked by the almost capacity turnout, they gleefully mine material both old and new, with the (relatively) newer ‘Miss You’ and ‘This Is How It Ends’ standing up just fine among early 90s gems like ‘Better Than Before’.
This is the kind of band (and performance) to make you put on some old jeans and a faded t-shirt and just go fucking nuts. Indeed, as The Hope & Anchor starts to resemble a sweat box, a small but boisterous pit breaks out during the encore. According to their Bandcamp page, Midway Still have been “wholly unsuccessful since 1990”. Just self-deprecating humour, we assume, because tonight has truly been a triumph.
Main Photo Credit / All Photos: CLARE DOWSE
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I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
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