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Review |
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Tonight I drove to Oxford to check out No Machine's first ever show in
the UK at The Jericho Tavern, a venue I had never been to before but have
heard a lot about such as the venue was where Radiohead made their debut
in 1987 and is also the venue where Supergrass got signed after an explosive
gig there. The Jericho Tavern was quite an easy venue to find once you
got on Walton Street, mainly due to the brown front the pub venue has,
we parked on the side of the road and made our way to the venue.
Downstairs at the Jericho Tavern is a nice pub room that is all candle
lit with many musical posters covering the walls, outside is a massive
beer garden that looks really nice candle lit at night time but I would
imagine to look pretty tacky in the day time due to the fact that no two
chairs or tables are the same. To get to the music hall where gigs are
played you have to go upstairs to a separate room, once in the gig room
it hits you that the Jericho Tavern is a bit of a dive, the room is really
small and the stage is smaller than your average pubs toilet, the walls
are black and battered and odd chairs litter the back of the venue but
on the plus side, the venue has done a tribute to the legendary DJ John
Peel in the form of a stunning red and white painting up on the wall just
above the door you come in and next to the painting of John Peel is paintings
of Radiohead and Supergrass which is the venues claim to fame in the music
business.
 We got to the venue just as No Machine were finishing off their sound
check, a few moments later the doors opened but unfortunately there wasn’t
a queue of people waiting to get in and by the time No Machine took to
the stage there was about 30 people maximum in the venue due to bad promotion
from the promoter of the venue. The six piece looked pretty squashed on
the stage especially with all their equipment. Daniel was positioned to
the left of the stage right against the wall with his two keyboards extremely
close by and loving every minute of the set smiling at every opportunity,
Emil Rivers was next to Daniel and positioned to the front of the stage
playing his keyboard with passion and energy building up a sweat throughout
the set, Al Rivers was positioned in the centre of the stage on vocals
but was really limited to movement due to the smallness of the stage and
the fact Emil's keyboard and Pedro's bass was so close by. Pedro and guitarist
Fred were both situated on the far right hand side of the stage, drummer
Joca was positioned to the back of the stage and quite out of sight due
to the small stage.
 No Machine opened up with the title track from their forthcoming debut
album 'A Terrible Thing' the song has a long introduction and is such
a strong sounding song that sounds exactly the same live as it does on
record which is pretty impressive, vocalist Al Rivers sings every word
with passion and has some great movement on stage and you can clearly
tell he wants to go a bit more mental but is restricted due to being packed
on stage like sardines.
The band play a couple of slow songs such as the stunning non album track
'Oceans' which is really stripped down and laid back but really easy to
get into at the same time. The other slow song was the bands forthcoming
debut single 'Tell Me' which sounded even better live than it does on
record and it was good to see Fred's long guitar solo whilst watching
vocalist Al Rivers taking a break from vocals and swaying side to side
rattling his microphone. Songs such as the interestingly named 'Toast
The Toaster' proved to be a hit and so did 'The Races' where Daniel and
Emil Rivers really get to show off their skills with various different
synth and keyboard sounds.
 The
band played a 13 song set and the most surprising thing is that the majority
of the songs No Machine played tonight are not featured on their debut
album 'A Terrible Thing' which is living proof that this band are really
hard working and have more songs up their sleeves than a magician has
magic tricks.
Overall No Machine are a really talented band and really energetic live
and sound just as good live as they do on record, the band also put maximum
effort in like they were playing to a full house despite the venue being
quite empty which shows No Machine care very much about their live show
whether there is ten people watching or a thousand. The only downside
to the show was that I felt sorry for the band being so packed together
on stage and not having room to move and go a bit mental which you could
see they were crying out for.
4.5/5
Review By Trigger |
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Machine |
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Al Rivers (Vocals)
Emil Rivers (Piano)
Fred (Guitar)
Joca (Drums)
Pedro (Bass)
Daniel (Organ, Synths) |
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Related Links |
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| Review
Score Code |
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- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
-
What Was That? |
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