The Grates - London KCLSU - 25/10/06
3/5
By: Michael Lewin
The Animal Collective show at the Astoria back in May, June or whatever was easily the best this weathered music voyuer has graced while treading the grime-smeared streets of London this year.
What sonic intoxication! What individual communion with the hypnotic power of aural texture and colour! I can barely recall if there were other people there, so coddled and all wrapped in rapture was I at the time.
Well, Jeremy Warmsley was there - that much I remember. Buy his album.
Anyway, I only mention this by way of conceit; that much will become apparent. I wasn't particularly excited at the thought of the show beforehand - they were not and still aren't anything like my favourite band. But they kick my ass 'til it was all black and blue and a little green. But such can be some performances, especially to those who attend seriously (however whimsically), those who are bearded (however amusingly) and those who think about art (however pretentiously).
But those are certain shows - perhaps not that rare, but certainly rarely good. There are other gigs and other bands and other crowds. Midweek gigs at student unions by bands playing to crowds who only vaguely know who they're seeing, for example - completely different experience.
For what seems like forever but is actually only a couple of years, The Grates have always been a band I would run into near the top of the bill at a Club night, perpetually playing Fridays and Saturdays at Koko, Barfly or la Fiddler. It always seemed to be their milieu, those events so comfortably fitting them they resembled nothing so much as the dressing gown and slippers Patience Hodgson might wear backstage to relax.
Of course, I can't really imagine her wearing something so cosy and calm - nor ever even relaxing, bless her multicoloured, hyper-active, everlasting child-like glee at everything and anything.
Patience is the Grates, really: she represents everything they are. They are straightforward, in a way quite simple; they're a pulling-shapes-to-make-friends-laugh band, a playing on the periphery of your evening band. They're an addition - almost certainly a welcome one - to a night's revelry.
They are NOT an event in and of themselves, however. They just aren't a reason for a night out. Don't get me wrong - heaven forbid I would be such a type as to talk self-important nonsense about the significance and worthiness of music as transcendent experience and how the rest should go to hell for crimes to unspeakable to mention. Such notions are despicable, and those who spout them are undoubtedly serious and bearded and think about art but will certainly lack any quality of whimsy or amusement to alleviate the pretentiousness of their insecure, grasping little lives.
It's just - well... you know what I'm getting at. There just isn't that much to the Grates, and there's even less original or vital about them.
Don't get me wrong - they're lovely. They're adorable. Look at Patience - would you just please look at her. Cavorting about on stage, the bastard antipodean child of everything that's sweet and cute about Tigger, bright mis-matched colours and the argument for the existence of Ritalin as she hollers out '19-20-20' with that pleasantly distressing sexual undertone to her sweet voice. Just look at her and try not to grin.
Or, alternatively, look at the hindu-bovine, knowing and placid perma-grin slapped all over the face of drummer Alana Skyring as she keeps a lilting military drum beat on 'Rock Boys' before it blows that energetic wind your way. Yeah, it's sub-Yeah Yeah Yeahs, sweet-natured, light-weight rock-pomp, but it's heartwarming to all present.
Ah yes... the audience. For their part, they can't help but add to the impression that the Grates are playing because... someone has to be.
It is, indefatigably, a student crowd - about 20, pissed and horny, out to dance after an afternoon-evening stint in the Union bar below. The number of desperate, lascivious glances exchanged between sensitive humanities readers and smug, good-time Science types certainly outweighs the amount of satisfied or (ahem) Grate-ful grins thrown stagewards, you can count on that.
Which, if you aren't a miserablist who picks holes in the enjoyment of others, means that both the Grates and the gig are kind of an incredible success: a joyous, energetic and unobtrusive soundtrack to fleeting, disposable flirtations. An early-to-bed club night with a band heeded, wanted but marginal, giving it everything in the metaphorical corner.
But there is no engagement, no involvement - the music asks nothing of you, but then nobody asks anything of the music, either. Quite simply, the Grates aren't anybody's favourite band. Tonight is another night, just another night and everyone enjoys it as such. I left slightly sad for the Grates, as - joyous, energetic and adorable as they may be - it really didn't matter to the crowd that much whether it was the Grates playing or not.
It mattered to me, however - if they hadn't been playing I'd have been reviewing the support band, the Bishops. Now they were awful.
Photo Credit: Josh Pollen
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