Altsounds - Iglu & Hartly @ FREEZE, Battersea Park 25/10/08

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Iglu and Hartly musically, but having seen them perform live for the first time a month ago at Cargo I certainly started to see their appeal; as in five very handsome, fun young boys who are very friendly and clearly put everything they have into a set. So me and my friend were quite excited about this show and were looking forward to another great time like the last time.

The event FREEZE is an x game sports/music 4 day event, so it was full of skaters, snowboarders and so on. Having arrived on the last day at 8pm (just in time for the Iglu and Hartly set) I can’t comment on the rest of the event, but the moment I arrived I was fairly disgusted with the horrible wet scenery and smelly scruffy rude people. It’s so strange, when I was 14 I loved boys that skated and so on, but at 27 I was quite repulsed by the disgusting laddishness of them all. That includes the girls. Not my crowd AT all. And there’s something very sad about a person that still behaves that way at the age of 30, which a lot of them were. Does skating mean you can’t mature past the age of 14? I don’t know. The men definitely weren’t the type that opened doors for ladies.

But anyway, I can’t blame Iglu and Hartly for that! Most of this crowd would have come even if they weren’t playing. We made the right decision in not purchasing drinks before this set, as if we had it would have no doubt ended up on the floor from some unapologetic rowdy person knocking it out of our hands. Doing my best to focus on the set, I could see that Iglu and Hartly boys were doing another over enthusiastic performance like only a non Brit could. With lead singers somewhat embarrassingly rocking back and forth, sweat dripping off their hair, prancing around; it’s easy to see why so many people instantly dislike this band as that movement alone that they often do does inspire embarrassment for them. But the point of this band is they don’t care if they look silly, they literally don’t care about how they look (despite being very pretty) and being American they naturally do lots of cringe worthy things without even realising that it is.

I wouldn’t be able to list all the songs they played as unfortunately I don’t have an album as yet, but they did do all the ones they’ve had out (In this City, Violent and Young), and the ones on their MySpace, with my favourite of theirs “DayGlo” being played near the end to a great reception from a crowd who majority of which actually knew the lyrics (just like at the Cargo gig).

The crowd did take very well to them, lots of silly girls doing ridiculous dancing that involved the knees being bent wide apart and literally prancing from one point to the other (I felt like knocking them out) and the boys jumping around as if it was early 90’s hip hop made it seem like a highly successful set for the boys, which I’m sure they were happy with. When the band was supposed to finish they came back on for what seemed like an unplanned encore and did a couple more songs, to the crowds delight.

Credit to the band. If I was drunk I no doubt would have got into the spirit of things and maybe really have enjoyed it, but unfortunately I just can’t stand people I don’t like (their crowd) and couldn’t get past that really. At their last gig I was a little sickened by their chavvy crowd then as well, but had managed to have a great time regardless and the added bonus of the band being super friendly certainly helped. On this particular show, they did perform all the songs well, sounding good with no notes sounding overtly off key. A good performance from them I could see, but I just wasn't feeling it.

The set ended and me and my friend headed to the bar, made it back in time for Cypress Hill, which we only stayed for half an hour off before deciding we’d rather go to the Relentless tent listening to the power ballad DJs. So we did. What we saw of Cypress Hill was pretty impressive though, we were just a bit fed up of the crowd by that point though. Sorry.

Will hopefully be at Iglu and Hartlys' ULU show in December so that will give them a chance to impress me again in a nicer smaller venue.

Photography Charlotte Hoole - (Flickr: farleys_rusk's Photostream)