I finished the latest page of Rag and Bone, because I said I would and I'm good like that. As I was congratulating myself on a job well done (or probably more accurately a job that's... well... done) and prepared to settle in for the night with a lovely hot cup of Worcester sauce it suddenly popped up in my news feed that Hyde and Beast were doing a free gig at Pop Recs round the corner from me. Despite already having changed into my lazy pants I made an executive decision to go check it out, because, dammit, if I don't go to these things, who will?
Actually it turns out that lots of people will as the place was packed with the great and the good of Wearside. As is traditional at these sort of things the very tallest present had arranged themselves into a blockade directly in front of me, compounding the fact that the lead singer of the group is a rather diminutive,beardy chap who may or may not have taken part in the quest to reclaim Erebor.
I didn't really know much about Hyde and Beast going in beyond there's two guys, one who's called Mr Hyde and another who, disappointingly, is not called Mr Beast. It transpires that they play jaunty McCartneyesque pop/rock that I wouldn't really have imagined coming from former members of The Futureheads and The Golden Virgins. While a record shop's not really an optimal setting to see any band, the band came across as tight, likeable, with plenty of tunage in their arsenal, certainly on a par or better than a lot of the guitar based acts out there.
Of course, the fact that it was free was a definite plus. Again, full props should be given to the various Heartstrings that run the Pops Recs record shop for providing a space for shit like this to take place. Earlier this week Sunderland announced it'd be bidding to be the UK capital culture 2021. While the initial reaction from myself and others was the raised eyebrows and suppressed snorts of the terminally cynical if there were a few more places like that around town it wouldn't seem quite so daft.
Below's the video for a single from last year's Keep Moving album, which I thought had a nice Crosby, Stills and Nash 'Our House' vibe
Love and Fishes
Dave Denton
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