As a general rule, charity isn’t my thing.  It’s not that I don’t agree with it, obviously (I’m not a bastard).  One day, when I’ve got the castle, the five jailbait wives and the gold jumbo with the revolving bed and my grinning mug on the side, I’ll happily give my two’penny’s worth.  It will be a pleasure to tithe away ten,  fifteen , twenty percent of my hard earned to the sick, poor and/or needy;  I might even accept that old adage about charity being its own reward and not tell anyone about me doing it (though I couldn’t possibly guarantee this).  

So, perhaps understandably, I was feeling a little bit shifty on going to the Brick Lane Takeover, run by them quite wonderful people at Macmillan.  They’re much better folk than I; would they see through my lowdown, ligging self and cast me out into the East London night with the rest of the arseholes and asymmetricals?

The answer, I’m somewhat relieved to report, is a resounding no.  Never in all my days as a self-loathing music reporter have I attended an event where the staff were so friendly, so smiley: ‘Hiyaaa, how you doing?  Have you had a nice day? Do you know where you’re going?’ It was all without pretense, they were all without dreadlocks, it made me feel...well...special. 

The Takeover itself is a joint effort between Macmillan and seven venues on Brick Lane, who have put on a load of bands, most of whom are just bubbling under the surface of wider recognition.  We start the night with The Jessie Road Trip at Vibe bar, who are led by a sassy redhead (presumably Jessie), and peddle some funky rock sounds which are all nice enough, but not enough to hold us back from seeing Little Comets, who have been one of those ‘yeah, I think I’ve heard of those’ bands for a while now.  Being guilty of peddling that very phrase many a time myself, it was a much-welcomed musical revelation to  discover that Little Comets are actually a damn fine collective indeed, with their brand of indie-folk instantly recognisable yet somehow divorced from other music in its ilk doing the rounds.

'Mathilda', we are told before they lurch into it, is about an anteater called Mathilda.  Don’t really know what else to add to that.  It’s a class song though.

The lead singer pitches in somewhere between Jamie T and Ezra Koenig, and bears a smile so wide he looks like he’s been raiding Auntie’s medicine cabinet.  Fortunately (I assume) this isn’t the case, and Little Comets are just a band that seem to genuinely enjoy playing their music, especially when they get the reaction of two girls down the front who stick two fingers up to the perils of indignity and frantically booty shake next to the stage, before deservedly getting recognition for their efforts from the band at the end.  Final tune ‘Dancing Song’ gets the desired reaction to its ‘this ones for dancin’’ lyric, and the floor shudders with the bopping efforts of the mildly jingled.

From there to Vibe for a quick pilfer, then we alight on Tim and Sam’s Tim and the Sam Band for no reason other than with a name as ridiculous as that that they’re surely either the second comings of the musical Christ, or the very seed of Cowell.  At first sight I’m inclined to think them the latter- one girl and three blond boys with inoffensively floppy hair, all dressed in garish blue shirts done up nicely that suggest they have never been near a pair of tits, let alone a rock n’ roll gig.  It’s at this point that me and Chris start laughing at them a little too loudly and daggers fall as eyes from those around though, in fairness, once they begin to play the do win us round. 

A bit. 

It’s all slowly rolling quite-pretty folk soundscapes that threaten to go somewhere rather special. Unfortunately they tend to peter out before the big crash arrives, or when the crash does arrive it is less of a crash and more of a flick on the ear. Kind of like Sigur Ros without the exciting bits, for some (perhaps best unexplored) reason I start to think of them as boys that were kicked out of the choir because they preferred instruments to getting shifty handjobs from the priest in the confession box.  Unable to forget and not wishing to dwell on this comparison too readily, I demand movement and we stumble back to 93 Feet East for Three Trapped Tigers who change everything.




IT DOESN'T STOP WITH THREE TRAPPED TIGERS, MACMILLANS BRICK LANE TAKEOVER CONTINUES HERE

Posted In Festivals, Jun 26 2010. Words - David