Review: Late Summer Skank 2014

Headliners: Random Hand, New Town Kings
When: 31st August 2014
Where: The Fleece, Bristol
Reviewed By: Ben Chapman

Late Summer Skank hit Bristol again this year with twelve hours of variations on the excellent phenomenon that is the ska genre played live.

The Nomarks made themselves noticeable among the day's earlier bands with their upbeat and beer-friendly ska. The tunes bop along at danceable pace under classic reggae keys, shouty punkish singing, and a chirpy Hawaiian guitar tone. The Nomarks played an engaging set full of clean toned post-punk dissonance with a bright ska groove and layers of smooth horn that became progressively effective. Some songs digressed into a smooth and almost jazzy section but still didn't interrupt the steady skanking.

Next up was something a bit louder, hopefully not adding to the Fleece's unfortunate issues surrounding noise pollution, but sounding like they were well worth the risk, The Blitz formed the heaviest act of the early afternoon. Soon outside the venue becomes far less busy, everyone's warmed up and packing into The Fleece for some aggressive ska-punk and the promise of light moshing.

Later The Sneak Eazies led a smoother set of bouncy, self-proclaimed third wave ska with plenty of classic influences. The vocals had an authentic blunt flatness with politically informed subject matter, under a steady skank guitar backing and leg-melting walking basslines that got the crowd swaying. The horn section doubled up as backing vocals to vary the music and thicken the melodies.

The Fleece as a venue has a nice simple layout: big room with a bar on one side; the bathrooms all down one handy corridor; and everyone's free to pour outside into a cosy cobbled alleyway between sets. There's nowhere to get lost or for your party to sneak off and the focus is ensured to stay on the music.

Larryfish Experiment were an interesting watch. A few things set them apart from the other bands, namely their Mexican lau dress code and the drummer wildly coping with lead vocals in an energetically jumped-up punk-rock/ska hybrid. There was plenty of technical skill on display, as well as some fast and heavy thrash of chords.

The pleasantly awkward angular walk to the bass gave a nice dissonant edge to the more melodic ska sounding sections, which would quickly flip into harder rock at the drop of their weird homemade hat, which they'd named ‘Skankfish’. Before the band began the eponymous  song surrounding the hat, they offered the headpiece to the crowd, before forcing it upon a punter who had declined profanely. He was now The Skankfish, and proceeded to lead the dance alongside one of the band's funkier moments on the setlist.

This tuneful tomfoolery and the fact that the entire band are evidently having loads of fun, the entirety of its members getting involved on some shouty vocal lines, their rewrite of You've Got A Friend In Me, more commonly heard at the end of Toy Story, heard in a more crude rendition as You've Got A Friend In I, made Larryfish Experiment great to watch and hear, an excellent live performance that I wish they would replicate with their recorded efforts.

Cut Capers were one of the day's larger bands, busying up the stage with talented musicians and funky, offbeat-heavy sounds as suitably derived from ska as it was hip-hop. Adding an extra dimension to the genre mix was the female vocalist's sweet, almost torch-song vocals that sounded brilliant, but were sadly a bit quiet in the mix. As they started to play a half-memory of their Boomtown performance rushed back to me, when they were one-and-a-half songs into a promising set of downright groove before a power-cut interrupted them and everyone had to evacuate the fake hotel building that would have otherwise been a perfect setting for their opulent store of funk. Some excellent saxophone playing (from what was probably a bass saxophone, being huge in size and sound) and dual rapping sections kept the music varied and at a smooth but never boring pace.

Mad Apple Circus, despite struggling to fit on the stage, made up for their spatial organisation with an entertaining, vaguely jazzy set of ska influenced by big band and swing with a European melodic flavour that was always full of energy, beautiful vocal harmonies and the cheekiest of horn sections.

King Tut’s Revenge proved themselves kings of covers. Their skank-heavy version of Mad World won over the crowd in seconds with its genuine great sound rather than any cheap rousing of the crowd's memory of a popular song: these guys made it their own, made it suit their musical style with an efficiency that made you double take. Their attempt at Bob Marley's Stir It Up also went down tastily, avoiding the risk of straying into reggae cliché that it may do in the hands of other acts, but rather sounding nice, powerful, and upbeat.

Slagerij formed one of the more punk-orientated acts, with the stage more sparsely occupied than it had been all evening, the classic three piece line up played classic-defying punk rock with a heavier edge and ska influences that were sincerely and downright impressively felt without the influence of a horn section or keys. Fast and authentic stuff. The crowd reaction, the feeling of the bar rise in the moshpit, and the sales of beer rise at the bar, proved the band's relevance and deserved command at Late Summer Skank.

Imperial Leisure were on next and managed well to keep the pace at a similar level to what Slagerij had delivered. Their set was a fully developed incarnation of ska blended with the aggression of fast punk while the vocals flicked between an arresting wail and punchy rap. The audience heard perhaps the heaviest horn playing of the event with two blasting trumpets and a swaying trombone. The lead singer's good use of the environment helped keep the energy up, the room never looked busier during a strong performance: swinging around The Fleece's pillars and monitor amps, almost strangling his bassist mid flow, and generally strutting cool under a worthy backing from the talented band that made Imperial Leisure well worth the attention they received.

New Town Kings gave a cocksure performance as the Essex nine-piece intimidated the stage. The music wasn't as heavy as some of the day's early acts, which had gradually gotten more loud and distorted, but made an effective contrast as the tunes were just as developed in their own right, the sound of a classic ska that can be felt evolving into reggae with a variety of indistinguishable influences. Under the chordal layering of the horn section and steady offbeat bouncing, the crowd reaction to Late Summer Skank had so far been more headbang focused, the dancing now became truly orientated around the unstoppable repetition of the skank motion. Their confidence shined through, with the band addressing each other as kings; but as they began a track, abandoned it in a surprisingly musical record scratch mock-up, then demanded that the crowd tried harder to engage in the sing-along before launching into the track proper. Professionally executed but never wayward in its pursuit of entertainment, New Town Kings played a stand-out set featuring a varied mix of songs of downright reggae groove as well as the notably super-smooth croon of Take My Hand.

Late Summer Skank’s Headliners seemed well placed, effective in their own right without stepping on each other's toes, and Random Hand seemed perfectly set to conclude the night in a flurry of aggressive trombone (frighteningly not as impossible as it might sound), screaming vocals and condemningly tight bass and drums that really drove the crowd a bit mental.

A deeply heavy Northern groove, to paraphrase the lyrics in Play Some Ska “I love the beat but I need to shout”, explains how the music relies on a ska backbone that's shattered melodically in a frantic punk implosion carried off with supreme skill. It was interesting to see such an energetic vocal performance from the lead just before he connects his weapon-like trombone to the throat and lays down the abrasive brass melody. The resulting music was conducive to a type of moshing I hadn't experienced before, but an experience that's worth the bruises, getting everyone, and the singer, involved to make one final aptly heavy conclusion the evening.

It might sound like I've been overly positive here, it may be the latent effect of the event, the music, and the devoted audience, but I swear there wasn't a bad band playing at Late Summer Skank. It taught me two important things. Go to next year's Late Summer Skank, and hope that they never shut down the vitally helpful venue that is The Fleece.