Kid Galahad - High Wycombe White Horse - 8/5/02
3/5
By: Toby L
The chances are that over the past year you'll have seen Kid Galahad's name emblazoned countless times across posters advertising toilet-circuit, gig line-ups, as well as support-tours for various emerging bands.
During the last twelve months, they've managed to release a succession of well-received EPs, garner a small fan-base and achieve some favourable press. However, how this accounts for their 2002 could be completely irrelevant - what with the upcoming unleash of their debut-album 'Gold Dust Noise' into UK stores very shortly, i.e. make or break time.
Tonight, they're part-way through an extensive tour, taking in as many tiny pub-orientated rooms as possible in order to preach their gospel. The White Horse in Wycombe, usually accustomed by scary bearded-bikers, is this evening catering for a busy crowd of students and pretentious posers - it's almost as if Britpop never ceased. However, musically for the headliners this evening, the pre-mentioned 'scene' of the mid-90s isn't exactly something they're too accustomed with.
In reviews already, it has been suggested that KG are 'forward-thinking' - so, if this means that whirly noises, strange spaceship-landing effects, dance beats and the presence of a funky groove last seen circa 1989 from The Stone Roses, ensconced with the obligatory guitars and domineering drumming, of course, is modern, then maybe this quartet are.
An introduction from an invisible compere - one must assume the guy's cramped in a small room at the side of the stage - prompts the Maidenhead four-piece on to the step which resembles a performance-space in this venue. Frontman Ash smiles bashfully, uttering an introverted, 'Thank you,' for the odd entrance. Then, suddenly, the sticks hit the kit from behind and the band launch into opener, 'Runaway Train', ensuing mass head-banging from the leather-clad singer who, a second ago, you thought was as nervous as a choir-boy about to visit his vicar. The following disco-thud of 'Stealin' Beats' bears even more of the same cheeky, bopping melodies and the audience bizarrely respond by bobbing up and down on the spot, resembling a mass of moles that have just climbed out of the ground after forming a perfectly-constructed hill of soil; only the raucous, immediate thrashings of 'Where's My Gold' and a show-closing 'Pack It In' trigger off such a recurrence in spectator-behaviour.
This reaction is fitting for an act such as this, though; it's not all about the songs - Kid Galahad know that playing live is about putting on a show as opposed to merely wallowing in the drama of it all. For this reason, you're guaranteed more entertainment than hairs on the back of your neck when you seem them grace a stage.
To calculate the band's essence, it is competent (see 'Several Hundred Years', the Ben Folds Five-orientated b-side to upcoming single, 'Swimming To Shore'), occasionally exciting - check out the moody bits they do, where the PA-system becomes drenched in DJ-Shadow-alike pedal-effects and delayed vocal - but sometimes more mechanical than it is soulful. And that isn't to say the Galahad need to throw in the odd ballad here and there in order overcome this hurdle, but they may benefit should they choose to play the music naturally, as opposed to delivering what seems an occasionally self-conscious physical display of how an instrument should be handled.
Still, though, what with other UK/Euro acts such as The Rain Band and Millionaire set to hit the Brits this year with similar dosages of chipper rock-pop with an electronic twist, maybe Kid Galahad are in the right place at the right time. And, if that's the case, then you can expect a pretty satisfying back-catalogue and set of live-efforts from this lot.
Artists in this article: Kid Galahad
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