It’s always good, when a trip out to see a band you’d never heard of before
turns out to be a good night – especially when the gig is about 10 minutes down
the road, and you’ve had time to drink a couple of beers before hand. Well, it’s
safe to say Saturday the 9th wasn’t an exception.
A local pub was the venue, complete with local roaming way-too-happy pub dog
(which, incidentally, received it’s fair share of petting that night.)
Milk2Sugar’s set started with a distinctly RBF drumbeat; thankfully however,
they escaped becoming more than merely a cover of or copy of the fish, with a
series of original and surprisingly good ska tunes heard eminating from the
speakers.
| Milk2Sugar’s style ranged from some relatively serene ska sliding, to some sections utterly soaked in distortion, though it all seemed almost effortlessly carried off by the 6 piece (7 including the intermittent trombone player), and what was delivered was more than expected. The vocals were strong, yet sung in a distinctly American accent; slightly disorientating when the song finishes and the singer announces the next in colloquial English, but still his voice remained strong throughout the gig; the bassist also seemed adept, with some solid base lines. |
Setlist |
The horn section was, admittedly absolutely spot on – unfortunately, due to
the size of the ‘stage’ (a number of what seemed like milk crates – rock’n’roll)
they were consigned to standing quite close together, and an accident involving
the trombone colliding with someone’s head seemed inevitable. Similarly hidden
was the drummer, but sound setup was such that an almost equal importance given
to all the instruments; with the possible exception of the Sax, which was
relatively hard to pick out, yet still audible. A small interlude was made
compulsory to glean the result of ITV’s ‘Pop Idol’, with the choosing of Will as
a star proving once again, that the unabashed stupidity of the general public
shows no sign of changing in the near future.
Anyways, on with the show, and the Sublime Cover ‘Santeria’ seems quite good,
especially the lead solo which was carried off well. Audience participation is
all the rage nowadays, and singing about audience designated subjects is also
trendy – suggestions of ‘badger’, ‘russian underpants’ and ‘i’m a wanker’ on
which to base a song were all taken into account, and what came out was, well,
entertaining if nothing else. Overall, the gig was enjoyable; however, the
influence of bands such as RBF was clear, detracting from the performance
slightly; especially within ‘shining without you’, which seems to plain lift the
lyrics from ‘Beer’. I personally didn’t enjoy the American style vocals, though
they far from hindered the performance. Still, with some time and a bit of work,
Milk2Sugars could look forward to playing somewhere a lot bigger than a local
pub…
nick