Stone Bones - Live
Lucid Dreams / Horizon Shine
Thursday 31st of July 2008
Lucid Dreams were already mid-way through their set by the time I arrived at Hampton's, but I was lucky enough to catch a couple of good songs played by a group who combine some obviously disparate influences. Strangely, their music fell into two distinct sections separated by a semi-acoustic song.
Before the breaker track, things were quite lively and creative and afterwards, things were more obvious, staid and riffy.
They were by no means a bad band; in fact their sound was incredibly clean and well-practiced. The songs and performance do need work though.
Despite having a name that makes you cringe, Horizon Shine (groan) were a really entertaining band. The sense of humour that landed them with the awful name actually works when it comes to the song writing and tracks such as 'Shed', 'Don't Blame My Dong', 'Any Hole's a Goal', 'Nail That Girl' and 'Big Red Helmet' brought some genuine pleasure both musically and lyrically.
They sounded like Frank Zappa (after he'd spent some time in their shed) and if they could inject some slacker into their rock and remove one or two twee chord progressions, they could end up being a cult success.
Stone Bones seemed incredibly serious after such an onslaught of amusement, but they got stuck into their meaty-riff driven set and pumped out some polished songs. They were let down a few times by the drummer losing time and a fairly thin melody, which tended to hit the same note most of the time in most of the songs, although it certainly found its way up and down the angry-scale.
All three bands are still going through the development process, finding their sound and performance, so it's no surprise to see them paying a little too much of a tribute to their influences. Given time, they'll find their own direction and develop a more unique sound.
Author: Steve
Venue: Hamptons Bar (Southampton)
Found in: Live Reviews