The Grammatics
@ The Lamp, Hull
12th November 08
I must confess that like a few members of the audience I happened to talk to/eavesdrop on/follow menacingly, hadn’t really heard much if anything by the tightly rehearsed and extremely tightly dressed Grammatics. I had a nosey on their MySpace prior to the gig which sadly left me with low expectations; I may be alone in this but I have a slight aversion to bands that advertise themselves on websites with the three frightening words: ‘melodramatic popular song’. That and the words ‘Beautiful Dissonance’ in their ‘sounds like:’ section and the inclusion of ‘The English language’ in their list of influences did set my pretentiousness senses a-tingling. Although I suppose claiming to have these magic senses in the first place, and using the phrase ‘a-tingling’, puts me in a difficult position to comment.
However, after 40 mins or so of The Notebook (The Lamps’ dutifully acquired post-rock band #14 from central-casting support act) on strolled the main men (and woman), who went on to show us, to some extent, their mastery of not only beautiful dissonance but also of the English language. Leaving me, the bitter cynic, well, still bitter and cynical but happily surprised. Each song was nicely woven into the next with rising and falling harmonies and clashes, helped along brilliantly by cellist Emilia Ergin and the daintily charismatic front man Owen Brinley. The songs themselves provided an interesting mish-mash of styles with the kind of eclectic mixture of instruments and epic chorus lines likened by Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros. Still though, as implied earlier and exemplified by a moment of peculiar intimacy when Brinley walked out into the audience singing the final lines of the final song, this band are a bit gimmicky. But as a live act it would be a severe nitpick to slate them on this basis; they are a genuinely exciting band to see live. The audience seemed similarly pleased if unfortunately sparse for a band who showed a great deal of presence and potential.
George Cooper
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