Tonight saw a quick jaunt into town to catch up with some friends and a band who I was assured would entertain. Sadly – family reasons – I got there too late to see the openers In Search of Insanity, but I did catch the last couple of songs by local act Life on Standby.
What I heard wasn’t bad at all, if a little angsty – but I guess that’s what they were going for. Lead singer Erin has a cracking voice (though it was a little muffled at times due to the sound mix), and the rest of the band put together a good set. Simple, catchy and worth checking out later on. I need to look up some of the videos on YouTube that they were plugging!
Our headliners came on stage at 9:15 for a moderately short set to celebrate the release of their EP Sound of the Written Word. They’re not a band I’m familiar with so this live show was to be my first impression. I’m happy to say that impression was good.
They’re an interesting band to watch. Obviously cohesive with plenty of communication between them as they played, good coordination and some planned “surprises” for the crowd. However, each individual certainly has their own personality making them well worth catching live. This isn’t just a bunch of people playing their CD tracks louder than you can at home.
Tub-thumber Seb looks like Animal with a shit-eating grin, pounding away with his hair flying. Zach on bass comes across as a gentle version of the Hulk or Ben Grimm… amiable enough until the music takes hold at which point he could probably squash your skull in one hand.
Guitarist Matt looks calm and collected as he steps onto the small stage, but by the time he got going I’m staggered he didn’t stamp a foot through it or smash his headstock to splinters off one of the ing pillars.
Then we have front-woman Tiggy. I’m not sure if she was going for sexy, seductive or sultry but she nailed all three. With a voice and an attitude that threw me back a couple of decades, she knows how to hook the audience in. Speaking to her afterwards, she was apparently a bit stressed before the show but believe me when I say that this did not come across in her performance. As with all of her bandmates, she seemed completely at home on Broadcast’s compact stage and engaged well with the audience. Well, if you can call chastising Fatherson’s bassist for failing to clap along as engagement…!
Eva Plays Dead have a punky devil-may-care edge to them, but a lot more on top musically. Choppy rhythms, some nice bass-led sequences and a knack for switching from in-your-face anger to head-noddingly-catchy allow their songs to get under your skin remarkably quickly. Throw in the natural showmanship and you have a band that could – should – go on to bigger things.
With a mixture of tracks from their new EP and their existing album, Eva Plays Dead played for around an hour before topping Ronin’s performance at Wildfire by dragging the entire drumkit off stage and playing the tail end with Seb facing his bandmates, surrounded by the audience. That was novel…
Making it in the music industry is more difficult now than ever, and it takes something special to get yourself noticed. Check out Eva Plays Dead and you’ll notice something special.
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