I’m not certain what I witnessed tonight, unparalleled pretentious bullshit is probably the most succinct description. But let’s put that to one side for a minute and aim for a less emotive recap of the gig if we can.
The Displacements are four rather smartly dressed young boys from Leicester and totally inoffensive & forgettable tonight. The empty room and Glasgow’s often surprising apathy for bands touted as “Ones To Watch” leave them fighting a losing battle during much of their stage time. It ends up as a fine, by-the-numbers jaunt through 2008 indie trends but the scene kids just aren’t there to listen so it all feels like wasted effort from the band.
And talking of wasted time, we come to Late Of The Pier‘s set. Now don’t get me wrong, I was unbiased when I turned up, I liked & grew to enjoy their single The Bears Are Coming, the follow up & most recent release Bathroom Gurgle I’d tentatively filed under “nae to bad”. I ignored the reports of the band acting like wankers on T4′s Green Room and didn’t take any notice when the venue staff rolled eyes with a story of the ridiculous rider asked for by a band at this level. I was unconcerned, the band are hotly tipped for big things, this could be a gig to list in future years, “I saw them when…”
Gods was I wrong. Disbelief at the utter, utter festering shite I was being subjected to kept me going through the first few minutes, commitment to myself to work taking photos and to write a fair review kept me going for while longer. But all too quickly the bands superior better-than-thou attitude had removed from me any desire to give their music a chance. From what I took note of before giving up, the guitars are for fashion rather than playing, the synths would be better in the hands of three year olds or Ross from Friends and the tunes barely deserve to be recognised as music.
Late of the Pier are like a really bad movie that you’re meant to laugh at because it’s so bad. Except it’s so bad that it isn’t even funny, no matter how wasted you could get. The only enjoyment is the self-conscious laughter at ourselves, to hide the embarrassment that someone out there has played such a joke and managed to fool anyone into thinking that this is a real worthwhile band. Their attitude throughout was so overpoweringly superior and self-important that I seriously considered the ethics of whether they were worth the time spent on reviewing them.
So I left. It’s ill-mannered, rude and unprofessional but I left halfway through, and felt relieved when I did. So Late of the Pier end up with an accolade after all, they are the first and only band I have committed to review that have been so unremittingly awful that they’ve driven me to go home and watch BBC’s Sign Zone instead.
[flickr tags='displacements,lateofthepier']
