Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

"If you forget how to feel, reach inside of your chest. Is there a heart beating? Is there just emptiness?" So sang And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, back in the olden days, and the point still stands true. Colly Strings are a (relatively) new band, and they're still finding their feet in an increasingly crowded music scene. Arriving on-stage with a contrived theatricality, they launch into some finely crafted, angular indie rock. Despite their youthfulness, it's very accomplished and well crafted stuff.

However, for music as impassioned and melodramatic as this, there's surprisingly little emotional engagement. In a sense, they're almost TOO good for their own good, being seemingly unable to really cut loose and let the music overtake them. But it's still early days, and one gets the feeling that once they stumble upon a sound they can call their own, it will possess them and take them to places they'd never have dared to go.

In contrast, Before Machines slash and rip at their instruments, almost unable to stay still as they uncoil their own brand of emotional devastation. Epic soundscapes collide with choppy riffs, whilst voices choked with tension cut through the middle. But the problem is that all this intensity is directed inwardly, never leaving the stage. As the band seemingly tear their hearts out, the audience is left uninvolved, and uninterested. It's a shame, because this band is capable of so much more, but this could be a much needed lesson in the value of reaching out and connecting with an audience.

Which is something that Pocket Promise have always had a gift for. Perhaps, in defence of the other bands, there is a hugely partisan crowd in attendance for Pocket Promise's "comeback" gig, also their only gig on the horizon for the foreseeable future. Right from the opening note, the band give a master class of professionalism. Every songs displays a superhuman understanding of dynamics and arrangement, as well as packing a powerful emotional punch. By turns playful, melancholic, and wry, Pocket Promise are an incredibly accomplished band, and are not ashamed to show it.

But this is no display of clinical musicianship; rather than rage and scream about a broken heart, Pocket Promise have the musical gifts to write and perform a melody that might actually do it. Songs like If Not, The Tide Will Change and Facing Down are a tour de force in classic songwriting and performance, frontman Cormac Fee pouring himself into every inch of the songs, pushing them into a different emotional space, whilst new single Juno (ostensibly the reason we're all here) shines and sparkles with life.

It's been too long since we last saw them, and hopefully we won't have to wait too long until the next time.

Steven Rainey