Tuesday 6 October - Yep, it was a school night, but The Druid and I were out at Fibbers to see a band that came recommended. As we arrived there was a chap, Ian Ellwood I believe, who had just started his set. One guy and a guitar, always a difficult setup I think. He did some covers, some songs I didn't recognise with scatter-gun lyrics. His vocals weren't particularly expressive and his guitar playing was up there (or down there) with mine. So, no great shakes. Still, it takes guts to perform in front of a crowd.
The next support came from Sketches. Are those necklaces they are wearing? No, they're just high-slung guitars. Sketches are a four-piece from Leeds consisting of Matthew Hutt, James McBrien, Luke Rogers, and John Arkell (James, how about changing your name to Mark?) They play a mixture of styles; some big and angry, some urgent indie, some kinda emo, soundscape stuff. At times their frontman's vocals and guitar playing sounded like early Coldplay, a bit Yellow. Interesting sound, and a band I'll watch out for.
Now, the headliners were the Engineers, due to support Porcupine Tree at Leeds O2 Academy on Thursday 8 October. Simon Phipps is the singer, Dan Macbean is the guitarist, Mark Peters is the bassist, and Sweeney is the drummer. Tonight they were also joined onstage by a female vocalist, sorry, I've no idea of her name. The mix was very much in favour of the keyboards, which rendered most of the vocals inaudible. What I can say is that they sounded tremendous. The keyboards set up a canvas of sound against which the drums splatter and the guitars paint huge swathes of sound. It was shoe-gazing, blessed-out, synth-rock of the highest order. I'm guessing that most of the tracks are from their latest album, Three Fact Fader (penultimate track was The Fear Has Gone), although at least one, One In Seven, was from their eponymous debut album, Engineers. I've already ordered a copy of Three Fact Fader. Superb stuff.
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