venta

Just in case you're prone to kerning issues, or use a screen-reader, let's clear up the name first. The band Alvvays is spelled with a double V, but pronounced "Always". At least, it's pronounced that way by the band. I don't see why I have to get sucked in by other people's typographical cocking around, and have been persistently calling them All-va-vays.

I went to the Scala last week because I was tagging along with a group of friends; I did a hasty bit of vising[*] of Alvvays on Spotify then trundled out to meet the friends in a pub-which-serves-tapas.

Given the shortage of obvious nice places to eat in the Kings Cross/Scala region, I quite recommend the Norfolk Arms. We got a lot of tapas and a round of drinks for around £25 a head, so it's not a quick, cheap pre-gig solution, but the food is lovely. Book if you're going, and turn up on time if you book (we were ten minutes late and they'd given our table away).

Anyway, Alvvays are from Canada (or North America, as Canadians call it) and are a four piece (guitar/bass/drums/keyboard) where three of them sing. The main singer has a true-but-breathy voice that suits their style beautifully. If you wish Camera Obscura were a bit more gutsy, or wish Best Coast were a bit less fuzzy, try Alvvays. If that sentence didn't make sense, try listening to Marry Me, Archie.

With only one album to their name their set was short and punchy, and included a slightly erratically-improvised version of Cock o' the North by three of them while the fourth changed a guitar string. The main singer is the only who significantly speaks on stage, but she's smart and funny, and made the whole gig seem like fun. I'd recommend them :-)

As threatened on here last week, I did indeed head over to the Garage to see Mesh on Saturday night. Having got distracted by a surprisingly nice Japanese restaurant, we arrived in time to hear about the last two minutes of The Domino State - which was a shame, because they sounded interesting.

They were followed by Vile Electrodes who are great on paper: drum machine and real (well, real electronic) drums, a bank o' synths, a singer with a really good voice... Sadly, the whole was considerably less than the sum of the parts and I wasn't in the least excited by them. They really were quite unbelievably bland.

Mesh opened their set with a two-person rendition from a mini-stage just in front of the sound desk (conveniently right next to where we were standing). They did a weird melange of Trust You and Not Prepared, which was a bit odd, but lovely to hear an acoustic-y bit, and from such an unexpected location. Then they all turned up on the main stage and festivities began.

Having only seen Mesh once before (when I was rather unwell in Whitby), I'd been very much looking forward to it. Sadly, they didn't let me choose their set list and played a set heavily weighted towards recent albums. Which is what you'd expect a band to do, really, I just think that they used to write better lyrics in the Who Watches Over Me era.

For those of you not familiar with Mesh, they write songs about relationships falling apart, relationships failing, relationships spiralling into disaster, dysfunctional relationships, relationship disappointments and... well, that's about it really. After a while, I started playing misery lyric bingo with

d_floorlandmine - although having just checked, I can now confirm that When The City Breathes from the most recent album does not actually appear to be about any kind of relationship at all.

So I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the epic gig I was hoping for. I still rate them highly as a band; that combination of synths and real drums is one more people should really go for.

The closed with Taken for Granted, and left the stage leaving the crowd singing the refrain. After a while, they gave in, came back, picked up their instruments, and joined in again. We were briefly worried that they'd be stuck In The Song Forever, but they had an exit strategy. And they finally dipped into Who Watches Over Me to encore with Friends Like These. Hurrah!

Odd thing of the night: each song was preceded by an auto-generated voice announcing (e.g.) "Automation Baby, Track 3". Sadly, it was sufficiently quiet that it took me a while to work this out, and even then I mostly failed to catch it in time.

[*] Vising is like revising, only when you do it for the first time.