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New Rhodes [live] @ 93 Feet East, London
19th February 2009 February 21, 2009, 05:26 AM Views: 512
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 If I had been a New Rhodes fan in the first place, this review might have been a lot different. But as it was, I had never heard of them before. A quick check of their MySpace before I left was really all I had managed and my observations from that; well, I wasn't hugely impressed.
And unfortunately, I left the gig feeling that way as well. New Rhodes are a five piece hailing from Bristol, and from first appearances they looked like students at best, and chav rockers at worse. Aside from lead singer James Williams, the band lacked personality and charisma entirely. It felt a little like they were a few boys that met up for football practice every Saturday, went to their local pub every evening (an O’Neil’s, perhaps?) and liked bands like The Kooks and Coldplay, so thought they were indie and figured it would be fun to start a band. All whilst doing their A-levels.
They start their set with "Everybody loves a scene", to applause from the suddenly logical crowd of young professionals who like to think they're a bit "trendy" and a few clusters of very annoying young girls who tended to whip their cameras out every two seconds and take pictures of themselves holding up drinks, no doubt as if to say, "Oooh, look! I got served in here, let’s Kodak this moment for life so we can brag about it on Facebook and be the envy of all our school friends!". On second thoughts, they'd probably tag the pictures in Bebo, not Facebook; clearly accidently gave them too much credit there.
New Rhodes continue with "A&E", "You've given me something that I can't give back" and "I'll wait for you by the coast", and all the while I'm waiting to hear a song I can actually think is ok, something that would make me think, "right, so THIS is the hit". It wasn't as if the songs were awful, they were far from awful, they were just a bit... dull. To summarise I had written in my notebook, 'fans of Coldplay will love this', but in retrospect even that was probably too beneficial to them, I'd actually say now Journey South was a more accurate description of a band in their genre. They reminded me a lot of some early 90's band (that actually, I did like), bands like Better than Ezra, Del Amitri and at a push, The Gin Blossoms (actually I retract Gin Blossoms, Hey Jealousy was and still is an awesome tune). Bands that back then were good, but now compared to everything else that decade had to offer just don't even compete as being significant. For me, New Rhodes was a band exactly like that, just mediocre guitar pop, pop guitar. Dare I say it, a Level 42 type band.
There are some things that work in this bands favour, the venue seemed fairly busy so it appears they do have a good following. Front man, James Williams, had a bit of a magnetic presence about him, but that could just be down to his slightly interesting red shirt and ok haircut. Vocally, I could tell he sounded exactly like he did on their recorded music, aside from a slight tinny sound which was down to the notoriously bad acoustics of the venue. He sang perfectly in tune and his ability in that didn't waver, so in that respect, he, they, perform well live.
They effortlessly moved from song to song, with brief introductions stating whether the song was from their previous album or upcoming. "253", "Let's talk", "So alone", to set high light, "The joys of finding and losing that girl", to then final song of the evening, "I wish I was you".
Unfortunately, for me the set couldn't finish soon enough. I had been dying to leave the set half way through, something incredibly unusual for me, but forced myself to stay till the end through some bid of professionalism. The worse thing about it was that they technically weren't bad, the sounded good live and, like I said, they were far from awful, they were just quite boring. They definitely have an audience, but it so wasn't me. I need something a little bit more enticing. Sorry.
Last edited by lina-riot : February 21, 2009 at 03:13 PM.
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| | | | Overall Rating | | 4 | | Vocals / Lyrics | | 6 | | Musicianship | | 5 | | Production | | 4 | | Creativity | | 3 | | Lastability | | 3 | | Reviewers Tilt | | 4 |
41% | |
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