Pink Kink, The Orielles, Sundogs, Her’s, Odonata: The Kazimier, Liverpool

There’s something rather special about an autumnal evening under The Kazimier lights. The sacred grounds seem to have a halo hovering over them these days, as each of us try to savour every last living memory under that roof before closure later this year. So when KYC come up with a night full of the finest crop of underground dreamers in Liverpool, you’d expect something shit-hot, and shit-hot we got…in the end.

That said things started off a bit lukewarm, half-cooked. A bit like the weather outside. Purveyours of groove-indie and former Moats and RongoRongo bill-sharers Odonata opened up. Pleasant, ambient guitar flicks aplenty, the trio deserved more of a crowd but it’s rare an opening slot is seen by more than a smattering on mid-week gigs these days.

Thankfully the room began to fill up as lo-fi duo Her’s floated on stage featuring a printed out polaroid of Pierce Brosnan. Little did we know at this stage that the pair were on double duty, jumping on to make up Sundogs who would later follow. Her’s then, created when Barrow in-furness and Norway merged musical forces. Stephen Fitzpatrick and Audun Laading play out something so aurally complex for something so simplistic to the eye.  All’s clearly well (or weird) in their world depending on your viewpoint. A live rendition of one of only two current online snippets What Once Was entices you in with its charming bo-jangle guitars, water-tight bass and subtle 007 beats on which Fitzpatrick’s glossy caustic vocal lies softly on top. Although clearly not the finished article the duo tease so much more, only time and recording will tell on this one.

Read our Introducing piece on Her’s here

As previously noted Laading and Fitzpatrick were on double duty. Laading again manning bouncing bass duties and Fitzpatrick jumping on drums for next billing Sundogs, another in a long-line of student bands in Liverpool. Lead singer Brad could earn a killing voicing Fred Claus for December’s big Christmas number. His sombre spoken-word style vocal backed by lush guitar chimes on lightly layered, Mac DeMarco infused newbie To Be My Girl to close a sway-friendly set.

Read our Introducing piece on Sundogs here

Liver-fax trio The Orielles turned things up a notch or twelve in the penultimate slot with homemade garage-surf at its skewiff best. The venue had filled and everyone had drifted back down to earth after Sundogs. Ticking all the psych boxes, certainly the most energy, certainly the sweatiest and certainly the most enthralling. They nailed a mix of dark almost punk basslines and jangly surf-pop riff sequences on a now very impressive arsenal of tunes. Roll on their headline at The Shipping Forecast in December, we say.

We knew more about living existence on Mars than we did about Pink Kink in the run up to this show. The LIPA formed, multi-cultural quintet have very little online presence with only a very bare Facebook page to their name. No tunes at all, not even a crappy iPhone recording. So, it was ALL on the live show and boy did they deliver.

Fur coats a-plenty and screaming sexiness from all corners that left every man in the audience half aroused and half afraid, the far from genre specific five-piece entered and left behind art-pop for tropical ballads before you could even blink. Only taking a breath to note this was their official debut, at The Kazimier of all places. Wow.

Clearly fighting to once again make it socially acceptable to shake your booty like a polaroid picture and if this gig is anything to go by, categorically succeeding. Eventually closing with a psychotic blow-out of spoken-word majesty amongst psych guitars and boo-yah’s leaving you both startled and mesmerized at the finish-line. These quirky styled, free-spirited girls stand for and define feminism and the stage is their billboard voiced by both the beauty they show-off and the musical talent within.

Pictures courtesy of KYC Management.

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