tweeOFF! Present Vivian Girls @ NAC – 23.01.10

by Maxie Gedge

tweeOFF! is growing and growing with every gig, bringing the best noises from all over the world to the humble Norwich Arts Centre for a night of enjoyable ear devastation. Team twee seem to transform NAC into an exciting cavernous epicentre of the alternative. And tonight is no exception.

The only local band here, Follow Your Heart have been the subject of some scenester hype, not mainly due to their all-star Norwich line-up, but mainly due to their brilliant twangly, fractured art rock. They have often been compared to Talking Heads, but tonight they are on the more angsty and atonal side of Eno’s back, recalling NY no-wavers Mars with their repetitive drones and tribal rhythms. They stand still and shout hard, full of an awkward ‘I’m-a-geek-but-I’m-actually-really-cool’ edginess that sits well with their sound. Their performance tonight is great – a little less accessible than usual – but I think that’s purposeful and positive.

Ono Palindromes are a three-piece from Exeter. They seem a bit out of their comfort zone at the Arts Centre, which you would hope they would embrace, but instead they squirm and scream all over the shop like little kittens fighting for their mummy’s teat. Indeed, NAC is an awe inspiring venue, but all that macho ‘rock n roll’ bravado does not do wonders in winning over a Norwich audience. However, when these sweaty men get going, their music isn’t that bad, verging on the Nine Black Alps side of new-grunge, but wandering in heavier and more interesting suburbs. Their finest moments would remind us Norwich folk of Kunk, picking slight elements from Pixies, Future Of The Left, some old school Buzzcocks punk, and some new school Pulled Apart By Horses shout. But somehow it doesn’t quite mesh together to create an enjoyable finished product, more a pale imitation, sadly.

Then The Vivian Girls get on board. They blow the other two acts off stage immediately with their air of cool and inviting professional arrogance, swirling up the audience with a thick layer of noise. All three of them sing and lock together, and it’s as if this whole new dimension has been added to their sound. It’s girly and it’s dreamy and it’s fucking great. The guitarist has an entrancing Lux Lisbon vibe, which resonates through the band and through their music.

I had heard that they are supposed to be totally ramshackle live, and their recorded stuff does sound pretty loose, but that’s all a lie – they are REALLY tight. So whilst there’s jangly thin clean guitar, pretty minimalist drums, long plodding basslines, and three gorgeously delicate voices, it just blends perfectly, and produces an absolute onslaught of heavy surf sounds. And it’s not ‘scream-distortion-scream’ heavy, its ‘wow, my ears are FULL of noise’ heavy. A few songs go on longer than they should, and they loose momentum a bit mid-set, but with brilliant tracks like ‘I Have No Fun’ and ‘When I’m Gone’, they bring it all back, and the encore is just buzzing with jerky and sweet adolescent energy.

// http://www.outlineonline.co.uk