BILL MURRAY LIVES!

The Chalets / Hot Puppies / The Lusts

Leicester Music Café, 08/02/06

The Lusts are great. Well, I mean, they’re bloody awful... but they’re great. Initially I think; what the hell is going on here? These idiots can’t play their guitars properly and definitely can’t sing.. all I can hear is a snare drum and noise. Then I chastise myself for thinking like that and momentarily going against all I believe; cos these kids totally wanna be the Ramones. They’ve taken ‘learn 3 chords and form a band’ to heart, only they don’t have a Joey, and they clearly can’t be arsed with practice. So they sound kinda like the Replacements at their first rehearsal, only without the advantages of Paul Westerberg’s songs or Bob Stimsons’s guitar. This is stupid, sloppy teenage punk rock the way it should be done ; aimless, pointless, moronic, chaotic, snotty, noisy, funny, drunken and guaranteed to enrage any ‘musician’ within earshot. They play for too long and they don’t wreck enough stuff, but man, who cares – you shoulda seen the girls jumping for joy at the front of the stage. Why didn’t I have the guts to do this when I was 17?? Best band of the night.

Don’t ask me how, but I can tell the Hot Puppies are Welsh before they open their mouths. Something indefinable about their build, facial characteristics, aura – they all kinda remind me of former friends and acquaintances. (Hey, why don’t I start a eugenics weblog? That would be good for a laugh!)
They’ve got their stuff down good anyway, their stuff primarily consisting of unashamedly chart chasing white new wave pop in the vein of..... well I bet every review they get says B52s, but c’mon, there’s precious little ‘Love Shack’ goin’ on here, it’s just that most of the other groups who defined this particular sound back in the ‘80s take a bit more critical dredging to exhume. So we’re talkin, I dunno, the Barracudas? Martha & the Muffins? How should I know – you go down to Oxfam and get digging. And actually, how about Blondie? Yeah, there’s Blondie here for sure. From my own record collection, I’d make favourable comparisons to X circa ‘Under the Big Black Sun’ cos there is a slightly serious side to proceedings too, and some fine and interesting lyrics to grab my attention. But mostly it’s choppy guitar, woozy organ, belting female vox ; skinny tie party time. They’re a great, tight band and they bang it out nice and loud. And any band that gets the girls twirling around and dancing whilst the boys stand around looking faintly uncomfortable is definitely onto a good thing, right?

Legend has it The Chalets got together whilst attending All Tomorrow’s Parties – hence the name. Somehow I get the feeling they weren’t there to see Shellac. We’re in territory only leaping distance from the Hot Puppies and it makes perfect sense that they should tour together. Bouncy, floor-filling robot-rock from the boys, squiggly keyboards, synchronised dance moves and smart, saucy verbage from the front-ladies. Imagine a kind of Carry On Ladytron – it’s irresistible stuff, and fun-loving kids, electroclash refugees and indie-popsters old enough to know better will all lap it up. There’s a coupla stone-cold classic pop songs amid the silliness as well – ‘2 Chord Song’ being a particular stand-out. Ideally, you wanna see a band like this whilst guzzling whisky with friends at a non-existent (in this town) cool nightclub on a Saturday night and go nuts at the front and flail around on stage and generally act like an idiot. But a heavy winter coat sags on my shoulders, stone sobriety sags in my brain, I’m in a ‘music venue’ and I’ve got work in the morning, so hence all this chirpy frolicking starts to grate after about 25 minutes, especially when they launch into a song that begins with a long, muscular, repetitive instrumental build-up – I KNEW you had it in you somewhere, you Pontins-bothering fuckers!

To the dismay of the crowd, the bass player dedicates a song to “Bill Murray, who died today..”. A collective NO WAY rises from the assembled pop fans. Did we mishear? Was he just fucking with our heads? Needless to say, post-gig enquiries reveal Bill Murray to be very much still with us, and so what the hell was all that about, dude?

In a similar spirit of tasteless morbidity, I hereby declare that the Chalets have all died in a flaming bus wreck on their way to [wherever their next gig is].

Actually, I guess most likely he was referring to somebody else who actually did die – in which case I apologise.

Hmm.. a whole evening of glorious throwaway pop, and it still all comes back to death doesn’t it? Grr! Time to put some Will Oldham on.