Various Acts - 'Bring Your Own Poison: Live At The Rhythm Factory' (Snapper)
3/5
By: Toby L
The Rhythm Factory: one of London's most important venues in the past 18 months - advocate and nurturer of the Good Ole, Gritty Lahndan Revival, as spearheaded by The Libertines and a whole slew of their understudying, shitehawk, unglamourous pub-rock scenester-followers, whose careers are set to some day soon dwindle and descend more devastatingly than Gareth Gates lurking in a broken elevator in Centerpoint while eyeballing his latest chart-position in 'Music Week'. In a tornado.
Still, they're stars for a night at the Factory, the fashionistas and sneaky, underage teens heralding and worshipping the bargain bin chaos of bands whose swaggering in tattered, decaying leather is not merely personal choice, but the only way. But such cynicism is to not devalue the importance of the scene underdogs - as stated, they do make for a scintillating evening's decadence; hey, you'll probably even get to do a line with them after the set, and they'll put you and your mates on the (discount) guest-list for their next gig the following week at the Dog's Bollocks Tavern in Mile End. Not bad.
'Jackson Pollock is a pillock!' scream Art Brut, one of the exceptions to the rule, a band whose enthused eccentricity and wayward notion of melodic craft seems too charismatic to be a merely one-off sensation; The Paddingtons, meanwhile, are pretty deft at an infectious, hard-edge growl of a hook in their 'Tommy's Disease'; The Libs' own ramshackle 'Up The Bracket' is pre-ambled by a humorous, if pissed, compere; The Rocks sound like The Ramones with Barat on guitar; Selfish C**t muster a commanding, if directionless, drivel-electro-dirge that's somehow worthy; The Lams cheekily affirm our prior gag, in their toilet-circuit aping '(You're) On The List'; Babyshambles are actually pretty decent, despite the shambles, as proven in their future hit single 'Killamangiro'; while a further secret Libs track and Doherty solo number ensure the hardcore-fan sales of the compilation will prove weighty enough.
The main pitfall, however, is the overall, snobby sense of infliction that the package provokes - in retaining its (purposeful?) sonically very bootleg live-recording patchiness, each act merges into the next in a quite unflattering, seriously contrast-lacking clatter, and the notion of contrived authenticity over the whole affair is reasonably snooty; this is London, seems the overriding sentiment, and it is cool.
Well, as it reminds us of a top night-out the other week at Whitechapel's finest live-music establishment, we can't get that nit-picky. It's an intriguing, timely release. But as for an eternal, fitting document of a truly vital time in music? Ask us in six months.
Artists in this article: Various Acts
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