Walking into The Den in Harrogate I was initially convinced I’d gone to the wrong place. This was a sports bar; the football was on. Double check, no this is the right place. Spotting a few of the bands by a stage in between pool tables, I must be in the same place.
Then something quite wonderful to watch occurred. The football finished and the venue underwent a spectacular transformation. The football on the big screen was replaced with music videos and over the course of the next half an hour the erstwhile sports bar became quite a lovely looking music venue, resplendent with great sounds and frankly phenomenal lighting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a total transformation between two opposites, and it was done like clockwork: Conclusion the venue is a low-key Transformer.
Grabbing a diet coke, and maintain a perfect record of asking for the wrong drink, Mike Muir I get you, I set up to watch the first of two acts. I’d been fortunate enough to catch opening act, Felicia, before at GCLive in Manchester, and they certainly make an impression, enough that when my scheduled review of Amenra was cancelled, I took the opportunity to drive 60 miles into deepest darkest Yorkshire to catch them again.
Inviting the audience to Twerk ’til the earth burns, they open up with the heavy as heck new track ‘Osmium’ Felicia set about delivering the good kind of chaos, based mostly around tracks from this year’s ‘Feel good songs for Oblivion’
A highly original Trans-fronted mixture of Punk, Grime, and Metal, a musical melding that is carried of expertly by guitarist Rick Walker and Drummer Aaron Youd. Singer Felicia Lumpz delivering barbed and pointed lyrics almost tailor-made for a small subsection of the audience hecklers who were there to ogle the headliners was enough to silence any dissension in the audience, and enough charm to get them onside.
This is a smart, sassy performance delivered with style and they seem to go from strength to strength every time I see them. Their latest single ‘Revolution Business’ recently caused a bit of a sensation by filming a viral video where they led a Boris Johnson impersonator around on a lead by the statue of Margaret Thatcher, and goes down an absolute storm tonight. Finishing on the anthemic ‘Gammon Lumps’ it’s easy to see that Felicia have a bright future ahead of them. They were an inspired choice of support act.
Next up were the The Soap Girls, another unique act often most noted for their propensity to go topless on stage. Indeed, when I showed up with my camera in tow there were concerns, I was one of those grubby men who follow them around trying to get upskirt pictures. Do better men, that’s pretty damn sad.
Theirs was a brilliant set delivered with an amazing sense of freedom and absolute authenticity I’ve rarely felt before. The banter in between songs from South-African born singers Millie and Mie would have made a sailor blush. The ‘Don’t give a Damn’ tour is aptly named indeed, and in the thousands of gigs I’ve been to over the years I’m struggling to recall a band with this level of pure free energy about them, it’s palpable and joyous, radiating from the stage in abundance.
Bassist/singer Millie seems to be constantly throwing herself around the stage, contorting herself and playing the bass flawlessly whilst folded up like a pretzel. Part show, part acrobatics exhibition this was a set which epitomizes the maxim ‘blink and you’ll miss it’, indeed on a few of occasions it was a case of Blink and Millie would be sat on your table in your face out of nowhere like the Doctor Who nemesis the Weeping Angels.
Songs like ‘Jonny Rotten’, ‘Society’s Rejects’, ‘In my Skin’ and ‘Psycho’, this was a fantastic set of punk rock, with genuine infectious raw rock n roll energy to them, indicative of a band that should be headlining much bigger stages.
Then it was over a fantastic performance from both bands, who were a fantastic match and put on an amazing show that had me smiling all the way home that evening.
Check out music and merch from The Soap Girls here:
WORDS BY RICH PRICE