Wednesday 18 December 2019

Black Limousine / The Ombudsmen / Inflated Tear - Manchester Peer Hat - 18th December 2019


Wednesday night saw a very different trio of bands take over the Peer Hat basement - a rock and roll band, an instrumental trio and a one-off improvised performance by members of several underground bands coming together for one night only.


Inflated Tear's performance is a one-off in many ways. This is their first, and possibly only performance, an improvised thirty-minute song about the many ways in which sex can be a let down - from two people not connecting, it being simply going through the motions to more serious matters like gonorrhea or catching HIV. It's delivered by members of Four Candles, Factory Acts and The E-Fits with Ian out front off the stage reciting stories of disappointment, let-downs, laced with sadness but also with humour at times. Musically the band provide the perfect backdrop, allowing him to take centre stage, but also very much in control of the direction of the piece. That people stay in the room for the half hour, some dancing, rather than losing interest and heading upstairs to the bar, is the biggest testament to how successful it was.


Next up are The Ombudsmen. They're regaled in dressing gowns and shades and they create five minute pieces of music that aim to have you dancing. They draw in the biggest crowd of the night and insist everyone moves forward and joins in as they create pieces of music, driven by keyboards but with bass and lead guitar guiding the path too, that ensures that the crowd do just that even despite the lack of lyrics to which to attach yourself. They play a new song they call Flaccid Squirrel and their final song is themed around a medical procedure of sticking a tube in your penis at the start and finishing with it coming out of your arse - and setting that somehow to music as it works it way through your body. The men wince, but it is very much a song of many parts where each section represents a different part of the route. Whilst they might lean on humour a little much at times with their outfits and such descriptions, it should never take anything away from the fact that they achieve exactly what they set out to do.


Black Limousine have recently recruited a new drummer Neil and this is his first show with them, but you'd struggle to work that out if you weren't aware previously, such is the very intuitive way in which the three of them play together across their six-song set. They're very tight for a band at an embryonic stage, but they deliver songs like set opener Persona Grata, Vampire (a vitriolic rant at a leech), War On Dogs and their very promising debut single Dressed In Black with an impressive energy and fluidity, very much nodding to their overt influences, but adding their own personalities and playing styles plus Mark's vocals into the mix to allow the originality to shine through as well. They're loud and they make no apologies for that, they play riffs and hooks with no shame and nor should they have any when they're staying true to what they love and giving us their own take on it.

Black Limousine are on Facebook and Twitter.

The Ombudsmen are on Facebook.

Inflated Tear don't exist on social media.
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