Hearts Under Fire / Swim Good / Fallow Fields / Rival Empires [Live Review – The Boileroom, Guildford, 6/11/14]
2014 has been a good year for awesome album launches at the Boileroom. This time around, opening act Rival Empires lived up to expectations by delivering a strong set backed up with energetic stage presence and buckets of passion. Current TMMP favourite If I Was A Whale (prefaced by a short grammatical debate as kicked off here) sounds epic live, overshadowing the inevitable Paramore comparisons with nostalgic reminders of how good Lostprophets were before Ian Watkins started touching kids. It’s all about the clean sections in that tune, while elsewhere we got unexpectedly brutal riffs and shades of the Foo Fighters and Incubus. Add to that some solid musicianship and a guitarist capable of throwing up the devil horns mid-riff without missing a subdivision, and you have a brilliant up and coming British band. Read more…
As a born and bred Rock Guy, I’ll admit to feeling a tad dubious about this show. After all, mod culture is historically defined in opposition to more or less everything I stand for – but still, this evening proved to be worth the trip. Woking-based gravy bass purveyors Birdsworth got things off to a fitting start with gritty tunes that wouldn’t be out of place in a British gangster flick; The Tapestry‘s quirky rock’n’roll took things up a level with offbeat melodicism and sharp-edged riffs; and New Street Adventure blew me away with expensive-sounding chords, powerful soul songs, and a virtuosic showing from lead guitarist Billy Farr. 
For many of us, our comfort zones lie outside the physical world. Face-to-face conversations are bring replaced by IMs, text messages, tweets, and comments on Facebook statuses that drop off your news feed after you’ve scanned over them once. From this social evolution, a profound sense of disconnect is gradually emerging.
Although Guildford’s alternative music venue is called the Boileroom for a reason, few bands heat it up as quickly as Bare Jams do. For band and crowd alike, this show was very sweaty. 
Although I was gutted at missing most of Cardboard Carousel‘s earlier-than-planned set, what I did catch was as wonderful as I’d anticipated. Cardboard Carousel are an incredibly talented husband-and-wife team whose precisely attuned vocals give their carefully-worded tunes the depth they deserve.
Variety is the spice of life – and Demob Happy are living, breathing proof of that fact. Press-ganging almost every grunge-related rock subgenre into a wickedly unpredictable set, Demob Happy spread buckets of good cheer and solid rock riffs around the Boileroom’s main room. If you fancy the musical equivalent of an early Christmas, look no further than the links below. 
Moddi (full name Pål Moddi Knutsen) is a rare and special kind of artist. A Norwegian singer-songwriter unafraid of breaking taboos and capable of conveying intense emotions within the most stripped-down musical formats, Moddi and 
When you spend most of your time scouring the world for exceptional sounds, you’re constantly at risk of contracting the music addict’s equivalent of cabin fever. It’s harsh but true to say that a huge percentage of the music out there either copies time-dulled formulae or lacks the passion and dedication essential in connecting forcefully and meaningfully with a curious listener – and too much time spent in its company can leave you feeling bored, drained, empty, and in need of some kind of escape. Luckily, there are some artists out there who can turn that creeping sense of apathetic torpor around.
Although Bypolar and In Tyler We Trust gave decent showings and played their hearts out, this show was definitively all about Reeves Gabrels & His Imaginary Friends. Bypolar have improved significantly since their support slot under DZ Deathrays, and In Tyler We Trust offered a ton of hard-rocking energy twinned with the occasional flamboyant display – but it was clear from each support’s tentative and uncertain experimentations that both acts are still testing the water and building their confidence. Reeves and his über-solid band, on the other hand, are old pros at this sort of thing – and, as you’d expect, it really showed here. 
Now this was a real rock show. TMMP favourites In Dynamics got things off to a wicked start, performing flawlessly to an already-rammed Boileroom and running through epic tunes old and new. Immense alt-rock crackers like Waking Life and personal favourite The House sound extra fierce live, while In Dynamics’ freshest songs hint at a slightly heavier djent-influenced direction spiced up with even more delicate clean sections. In Dynamics are slowly carving out their own niche somewhere between Biffy Clyro and Arcane Roots, showing promise, progress, and some real reasons to get excited about their future.