Report: Club Rockfeedback w/ Maps and Atlases, Tall Ships & Fiction @ Cargo, London 12/10/10
By: Stan Morgan
International football has been a frustrating experience in recent times for those of you unfortunate enough to be English. As both an avid music and football fan myself, it’s always a dilemma as to which should win out. Fortunately tonight I made the right decision, and decided to cheer on three of my new favourite teams - Fiction, Tall Ships and Maps and Atlases.
Fiction trade in the kind of youthful energy and musicianship that probably got bands like Foals and The Maccabees noticed in their early days. Standing four-strong with no drummer (a couple of floor toms and a snare are played by one or more of the members throughout the set), the band work their way through their extremely promising repertoire without even breaking a sweat. With a bit more experience and the quality of songs like ‘Phyllis’ these boys could very easily come good.
It’s hard to imagine a band more adept at making the most of a support slot than Tall Ships. In their allocated 30 minutes they manage to squeeze in instrumental numbers about “two dogs”, enough mid-song instrument juggling to qualify them as a circus act and even have time to debate the pros and cons of Winter vs. Summer with a crowd member. Phew. Mix this with their fast paced brand of clever indie with impressive use of guitar loops and you get a crowd left more than thoroughly impressed, and ever so slightly out of breath.
And so it was amid much expectation that Chicago’s Maps and Atlases, tonight’s main course, humbly waded their way up to the stage. The lack of contrived image or pretence around the band resulted in a sold-out crowd impossible to pigeonhole, with beardy types, Hoxton poseurs and your dad all putting their differences aside to share their appreciation for one of the most exciting new bands to emerge in the last few years.
Set opener ‘Pigeon’ set the standard for what was to come, with fluid guitar work and Dave Davison’s vocals sounding even better live than on record. With the majority of material inevitably coming from recently released album Perch Patchwork in the early stages, anyone left yearning to hear some oldies were more than satisfied by beefed up versions of ‘Witch’ and ‘Ted Zancha’ from the You & Me & The Mountain EP.
Amid a set of many highlights, the recreation of album opening double act ‘Will/The Charm’ caused the biggest response, ending in Davison’s solo guitar work flanked by a triple drum attack (taking notes from Fiction, perhaps?). The big finale saw the band move down into the crowd and treat them to a couple of acoustic numbers, a stunt which can often produce mixed results, but tonight came across as a sincere gesture of appreciation to their fans.
As the set came to a close and news filtered through of a miserable 0-0 draw with minnows Montenegro, those torn football fans lucky enough to be in the venue tonight considered themselves very, very lucky.
Artists in this article: Maps and Atlases, Tall Ships, Fiction