The Horrors in Belgium, what a night that will be! And to be honest, I wasn’t in the mood to see another support band, no I wanted to hear The Horrors and go home immediately. But you know the plague of going to a gig, you have to see the support whether you want it or not (…unless you wanna miss 20 mins of the headlining act).
When I entered the venue, Falling Man were just on. What a weird sound was that, a guy covered in mud doing some screaming vocals, a drummer, and two guys who really knew how to handle their guitar. The more I looked, the more I recognized two familiar faces…Lode Silleghem and Paul Van De Velde. Two names who might say you nothing, and not even here in Belgium, mind you.
The problem is that in ideal world these two would be rockstars in the highest order (well one is a journalist for the local TV so that’s already something) as they were Cpt. Moon and regular readers from this zine might remember that ten years ago I was going awol over them. They supported The Fall, they made a genius mini-album on Kinky Star and then they faded away I guess…ten years later they are reborn as Falling Man. Has their sound changed? Difficult to say as they still sound as the bastard sons of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (or is that Heavy Trash now?) and I guess it’s now added with some dirty sounds by The Melvins or Buthole Surfers.
Their set grew more and more and me (especially as I realized I was watching some local heroes) but I don’t know if the audience was that perfect as they stood and watched, especially stood…in fact it wasn’t even a perfect audience for The Horrors. You see, in the UK The Horrors are big, even extremely big, the lovedarlings from the British press and the perfect band for the indiekids who are in desperate need of some new heroes.
In Belgium, the people are willing to welcome their sounds but …who are they?, or perhaps more to the point : to which public do they belong?
Is it goth (you saw Goths), is it psychedelic garagerock, is it shoegazing, is it rock, is it indie and it looked like every class (what a terrible word!) had sent out their sons to see if The Horrors fit in their category or not…
Another problem is that The Horrors have two albums out, the first one (‘Strange House’) being an ordinary garagerockalbum, the second (‘Primary Colours’) being one of the best albums from the last ten years.
It all starts with an enormous loudness like The Horrors are warning you that they wanna overwhelm you. Sadly enough, they don’t during the first ten minutes as the voice from singer Faris Badwan couldn’t overrise the loud shoegazingguitars and genius synthsounds from Tom Cowan.
It only lasted 10 minutes but sadly enough, they also played the brilliant two opening tracks from ‘Primary colors’ : “Mirror’s Images” and “Three Decades”.
Despite the voice that got lost, you immediately saw that Faris learnt all the podiummoves from a lad called Iggy Pop.
The sound from The Horrors was as varied as their public…once they were Jesus & The Mary Chain, sometimes The Doors, at other times The Stooges and when they did “Ghost Rider” as bonus they sounded as…Suicide…
At the end you saw confused faces from a crowd who didn’t want to rock (just like they refused to give a willing ear to Falling Man), they were the crowd who were checking out if the British press was right or not…a shame as if The Horrors have one problem then it must be the fact that they’re a band with a sound, and not a band who can write an instant indietune that got played on the radio.
The Horrors are more than a flash of fashion, they do matter even if they don’t always know themselves which way they wanna go, but if they choose the path of “Primary Colors” we have some new heroes…
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