Live Review: The Lounge Society @ Crofters Rights, Bristol


The Lounge Society by Piran Aston

The Lounge Society by Piran Aston




‘Our lyrics are a call-to-arms for people who share our dismay at the dismal future being carved out for people like us.’

So said The Lounge Society recently, and if that statement alone doesn’t get you on board with them then you’re on the wrong website.

Part of the burgeoning Hebden Bridge music scene, The Lounge Society (winners Live4ever’s track of 2020) demonstrably have a wealth of potential which has, thus far, been constrained.

On record, their blend of angular-but-hefty, danceable-but-serious offerings has shown great promise, even if the frustration on the parts of both the band and the listener has been palpable.

Finally they are able to tour and unleash their frustration and rage to like-minded souls around the country. Unlike seemingly all other gigs right now (we’re as relieved as you to be here, but your happiness isn’t unique so say something new, please), the quartet don’t gush, they just get down to business.

The Crofters Rights crowd barely bat an eyelid as the band take to the stage, yet if they are fazed by the muted response, they don’t show it. Opening starkly and cinematically, they go through the gears before commencing Cain’s Heresy, echoing guitars and frantic urgency. Like most of their songs released to date, the track is intense enough anyway but expanded and beefed up live.

Cameron Davey’s voice fills the room and the contempt spits from his mouth; ‘Fashion’s all they got, they ain’t got no fashion at all’. Davey’s body language is initially nonchalant (the dancing comes later) but with an intensity in his eyes, while the growls and cries that emanate from his throat belie the elfin features and small frame.

The wonderfully-named Herbie May on lead guitar (at first) has a mop of Marc Bolan hair and the slightly fey English diction to match. He’s dressed in shirt and trousers which gives the impression of a man having not longed finished work. To be fair, he may very well have.



Drummer Archie Dewis, meanwhile, sports a Stooges t-shirt and puts in such a shift that Scott Asheton would be proud, while Hani Paskin-Hussain goes about his business with a minimum of fuss, apart from to correct a member of the crowd. When told they rock, he informs us that they ‘don’t play rock music’.

They do, but that’s just one aspect of their sound; the cymbal-heavy Valley Bottom Fever would have been an indie-dancefloor classic 20 years ago, for example, but the collision of styles is what makes them fascinating.

Songs can veer from Madness to Motown in a heartbeat, with one newer number sounding like Jon Hopkins on speed one second, The Strokes the next. The quaveringly raucous disco of Burn The Heather, a straight-forward guitar track on surface level, reveals itself to be the sum of its parts and then some.

With only six tracks released commercially a chunk of the set is unfamiliar but bodes well for the future, with echoes of Joy Division or the swagger of 2003 Kings Of Leon.

Yet sometimes their eclecticism works against them; more than once the cheering takes a few seconds to manifest, simply because the audience aren’t sure if there’s another, wilder segment of the song to come.

Their dexterity isn’t just confined to the sound either. The three guitarists swap bass, lead and rhythm (and stage positions) for new single Last Breath (and thereafter), as if flaunting their flexibility. Yet the simmering anger rarely subsides, culminating in the opus of Generation Game which builds up, slows down and builds up, etc etc.

Like The Lounge Society as a whole, it’s impossible to pin down and all the better for it.

Richard Bowes

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