The last night of a busy tour of the UK, and on a Friday night (October 14th) to boot, ensures a celebratory air as The Clockworks arrive to Bristol.
Armed with an album’s worth of songs in the public domain (if not an actual album itself), The Clockworks are quietly but assuredly gathering an undeniable momentum.
It helps that the songs are good, of course. Better still that they actually have Something To Say and that singer and songwriter James McGregor can rhapsodise his thoughts on 21st century society with a watertight band backing his every line with whipcrack solidity.
Fittingly, the first song opens with the line, ‘And that’s another thing…’, as the foursome fly out of the traps with Endgame, all fizzing hi-hat and crisp guitar.
‘We’re post-punk, post-truth, post-Europe, post-youth, post-modern, post-faith and God and post-post too, as music with nothing to say plays on the radio’, McGregor opines, making an immediate grab for the crowd’s attention.
When Live4ever met with The Clockworks just before the pandemic, they were looking forward to a busy 2020 with festivals lined up.
Happily, their momentum wasn’t stalled but rather postponed, and the evolution in their songwriting has clearly evolved in the three years since.
Early single Bills And Bills is dispatched with early in the set, still with a crashing beat but somehow sounding slightly naïve in comparison to the newer material.
That said, Stranded In Stansted, which takes a relatively mundane topic (which you can probably guess, based on that title) is made to sound disproportionately epic and muscular, in line with their newer offerings.
The Bloc Party-esque Moses is played ferociously by guitarist Sean Connelly, who often appears to be revelling in the moment, all angular propulsion.
Indeed, propulsion is The Clockworks’ default setting: drummer Damien Greaney leads the motorik Money (I Don’t Wanna Hear It) which pulverises all in its way, while the driving drama of Feels So Real (‘a twenty-foot sign says you’ll never find love…until you buy these gloves,’) ups its tempo as the song progresses, and Can I Speak To A Manager? somehow makes a sweltering room even sweatier, all snaggled riff and stoic bass from Damien Greaney. The latter song competes with Endgame for most arresting opening lyric: ‘My God, what a palaver!’.
Current single Advertise Me is a gem, McGregor conveying his thoughts on our consumer culture with a big chorus, but on the live stage it sounds positively monstrous, with Connelly’s windswept guitars adding to the sense of scale.
Meanwhile, newbie Life In A Day evokes Joy Division where Mayday is made up on jangling drama that, it has to be said, most obviously recalls The Smiths, but it’s not all indie – All That You’ve Lost swinging with an Americana twang.
They may be largely unassuming on stage, but The Clockworks let their music do the talking, at points allowing elaboration on some tracks rather than the concise, punchy recorded versions.
Somewhat ironically, The Future Is Not What It Was (replete with knowingly cynical delivery of the line ‘everything’s OK’) may rail against broken promises, but The Clockworks are unlikely to have to worry about their own.
