Everything Everything playing London Roundhouse for ‘Fightback’ (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever)
For nearly 15 years, during the latter part of the last century, London’s Roundhouse venue entertained dust motes rather than music fans due to a lack of funding.
That is until in 1996 when the abandoned bubble was saved by a rich local businessman. It has since been drawn brightly back on the UK’s live music map, so it seems as germane a place as any for the Music Venue Trust charity to host Fightback, a one-off event of live bands and solo artists raising money for grassroots venues throughout the country in need of legal advice or under threat of closure.
The theory being that without these smaller hubs to kickstart fledgling bands we’d have no Beatles, no Radiohead…Imagine a Pepperless world and you can see their mission’s point. (Paul McCartney himself issued a statement of support for the cause just this week.)
What’s good and mostly uncorporatey about tonight, split between three stages of varying size, is that the majority of acts are unknowns. They are the ones you might catch on a whim someplace on a Monday night and feel suddenly walloped by. Like singer Anastasia Walker from rock outfit Bang Bang Romeo. Her fruity vocals, on Johannesburg especially, pull a near claustrophobic crowd into the side bar. The buzzy mood upholds for über-afro proprietor Billy Lockett on the piano followed by the guitar growls of groups The Wholls and Sisteray.
Next door, in the circular main room that looks like the inside of cast iron spaceship, brief sets from The Carnabys and Ed Harcourt bookend a zippy performance from Jake Isaac. The latter of which flashes over the boards with his acoustic guitar, asking people to shake a leg or at least twerk for his last number.
Sisteray at the London Roundhouse for ‘Fightback’ (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever)
Away from this there’s a stretching queue downstairs to get into the last of the rooms. A cramped space with rising rows of seats and a merciful one in, one out policy on the door. Cuban-heeled Tim Arnold, who used to front minor Britpop band Jocasta and is now on his own errand to save Soho’s artistic dens with the Save Soho campaign, sounds like The Kinks if they’d ended working the jolliest of cruise ships.
Back upstairs it’s filling up modestly in the UFO for Public Service Broadcasting. They are in ties and dickie bows and look like a set of hip maths teachers who happen to write even hipper music over sound clips from the American versus Soviet space race, for example. A giant astronaut bumbles across the stage at one point. Intense visuals play on screens in the background. Three brass players occasionally turn up and jig around, like on the itchingly funky Gagarin. Foolproof gimmicks that button all eyes on the singer-less band.
The last word is left to implicit headliners Everything Everything for an album’s worth of songs. Manchester’s indie rock lot dedicate most of their slot to last year’s Get To Heaven, Jonathan Higgs‘ hyper-syllables (some might call it rap) on Distant Past and loquacious falsettos on just about everything else glare as bright as the fluttering backdrop colours. For anyone unsure of how to behave histrionically behind keyboards, the keyboardist educates.
Playing more of the early numbers that made them famous in the first place, the kind they’d have played in the grassroot clubs they’re trying to save, might have felt more apt. But it’s to their credit that they are part of tonight’s purpose, as vim as if it was their own show.
Take heed Bob Geldof, this venture could be the start of another band aid.