The Brighton Festival is in its third and final week with even more brilliant theatre, comedy, art, dance, talks, debate, cabaret and music to come. CMU's sister publication, ThreeWeeks, is covering it all, and you can check the coverage at http://www.threeweeks.co.uk, with music reviews here each day in the CMU Daily. Today more from last weekend's The Great Escape, with individual gig reviews from team CMU/ThreeWeeks.
Great Escape At The Brighton Festival (Featuring Nouvelle Vague, Patrick Watson and special guests Hello Saferide and Adjagas)
Sometimes punctuality pays off; those turning up fashionably late to this show missed the first, and most enjoyable, band on the bill. Which is a shame, because after Hello Saferide's catchy, garage-symphonic pop, latecomers contended with two more support acts whose scores tended to the self-indulgent and swampy. The real draw, of course, was the bossa nova punk of Nouvelle Vague; yet although they treated us to the best musicianship of the evening, their upbeat, smiley performance style often stripped away too much of their source material's menace to stay effective with few of their punk and new wave covers managing to avoid sounding like affectionate kitsch. Perhaps if they'd come earlier, too - say, to England in 1980 - they'd have found some positive influences for their own improvement.
Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, 17 May, 8:00pm, £12.50, festival pp10.
tw rating 3/5
[jb]
Foals
With throbbing beats that seep up through the soles of your feet and tweak every single body muscle, Foals' 'secret' Great Escape performance transformed the crowd into a jerky gyrating mass, to the point where I feared the pier would break and we'd all end up in the sea. The sun still shone on this, the first show that I witnessed during the festival's Friday line up, yet it was impossible not to lose myself in the band's sweetly melodic yet pulsating electro, which really belonged to the night. A sharp and invigorating treat, Foals' angular, startling music sent me on my 'escaping greatly' way with musical standards and expectations that the rest of the evening's acts would have a challenge to live up to.
Horatio's Bar, Brighton Pier, 18 May, 7:00pm.
tw rating 4/5
[md]
Willy Mason
By far the most stunningly beautiful show that I witnessed during the Friday of Great Escape was the set performed by Willy Mason. Whilst the desperately disappointed fans outside who had outnumbered the venue's capacity were treated to Willy's busking skills before the show, the rest of us enjoyed the musician's display of talent at utterly captivating an audience through the sheer loveliness and intelligence of his songs featuring lyrics that seem almost too articulately wise and poignant to be written by someone of his tender years. The backing band, by contrast, succeeded in adding an up-beat vibe to the show, if ever so slightly undermining Mason's vigour as a soloist. The gorgeous 'Oxygen' was his encore, a rendition which plastered irrepressible smiles across the faces of the crowd. A very special singer-songwriter, I was utterly enchanted by him.
Pavilion Theatre, 18 May, 10:45pm.
tw rating 4/5
[md]
Help She Can't Swim
'Can we just enjoy this please?' sang Help She Can't Swim before breaking into a touch of the more hardcore element of their music. I obeyed the request to a point. The band punched their keyboards and played some fast paced guitar creating music peppered with a healthy dose of anger, all of which combined to ensure that this was a relatively enjoyable show which deserved a good fat stomp of a dance. However, the audience was somewhat static and I felt that although Help She Can't Swim had the potential to shock and surprise, they need to push more boundaries and innovate more within their genre before they can become particularly special. An experience that was entertaining, if unvarying - a much better time would have been had by all, if only each song could have differed more from its predecessor.
Arc, 18 May, 8:45pm.
tw rating 3/5
[md]
The Dash
As The Dash finally began their set, it became clear they weren't going to make many friends when the soundman's response to the vocalist's snide remarks was 'I'm not going to enjoy this'. Just as I predicted, the frontman's arrogance and indifference to the crowd made it difficult to enjoy the London trio's performance, with no part of it making me want to abandon my seat in the corner of the venue. However, the band were redeemed a little by catchy lyrics, harmonies tighter than the lead singer's jeans and up-tempo beats which got everyone moving in time to their jerky pop-punk tunes. This was an enjoyable gig, but could have been more so, had The Dash left their attitude at the bar.
Hector's House, 19 May, 7:15pm.
tw rating 3/5
[rw]
Florence And The Machine
Florence soared onto the stage in a whirlwind of eagerness to sing. Caught up in her melodramatic performance, she sang from the gut, exuberantly dishing out her sometimes amusing, on occasion heart-wrenching, lyrics. This dose of soul-food was eagerly digested by a clearly delighted, if taken-aback audience. Accompanied by Matthew Alchin - 'the Machine' - with his jazz-enriched guitar, the two musically bounced off each other to build something utterly complete. It didn't matter that Florence occasionally hit the notes imperfectly - that itself might be explained by her distinct lack of sobriety following the show, when she rather anxiously asked me "if it went all right?" After experiencing her visceral, energising songs, there was nothing I could have honestly said but "It was more than all right".
Pressure Point, 18 May, 1:30am.
tw rating 4/5
[md]
ThreeWeeks in Brighton is only possible because of the kind support of Latest 7 http://www.latest7.co.uk - plus tune into the Latest radio show, every afternoon on Radio Reverb, listen online via http://www.latest7.co.uk/radio