AmpedReviews.net

Mindless Self Indulgence - 18th October 2007 - Nottingham Trent Student's Union
Support - Scanners

Things do not start well for opening act The Scanners as front woman Sarah begins by apologising in advance for her voice, which she has all but lost.
This proves to be no exaggeration, as she is only audible on a few occasions throughout the course of their entire set. Despite this, the band do not seem willing to even try and compensate for their temporary lack of vocals, trudging through half an hour of material with little enthusiasm. They leave the stage to polite cheers that sum up just how little impression they have made on tonight’s crowd.

At least headliners Mindless Self Indulgence are in no danger of delivering such a pedestrian performance. Before the first song even begins, it becomes clear this isn’t going to be your usual gig, as front man Jimmy Urine takes to the stage via the crowd, pushing his way through hoards of fans whose initial confusion turns to hysteria when they realise just who it is trying to get past them.
The screams only intensify when he finally clambers onstage and the band immediately launch into long-standing live-favourite ‘Tornado,’ which sees the crowd screaming along to every line, bellowing the unlikely lyrics “I wanna be, wanna be, wanna be pretty!” with furious conviction.

MSI have always been a band to boast truly fanatical fans, and tonight this is clearly in evidence, with the crowd singing so loudly that Jimmy Urine eventually turns the microphone on them and says they might as well sing for him. Urine’s performance fits MSI’s self-styled ‘industrial-jungle-pussy-punk’ perfectly. When he isn’t twitching along to the genre-bending songs, he’s telling the audience “I don’t know why I bothered coming here tonight”; or attempting to eat a pair of underpants a fan has thrown onstage, or declaring he will take his trousers off if the crowd sings loudly enough.

For little over an hour, MSI convulse across the genres, shooting off lightening-fast Saturday-Night-esque intros, RnB rhythms, furious punk choruses and techno beats. It shouldn’t work, and it certainly shouldn’t work live, but somehow it does, with each song as bizarre and mind-boggling as it is brilliant.
What’s more, they manage to pull it off while delivering non-stop entertainment: bassist Lyn-Z spends the bridge section of ‘Shut Me Up’ bent backwards with her head almost touching the floor in a way that really should be physically impossible, and Jimmy Urine is a man apparently incapable of standing still. They end the night with their own take on an ‘encore’ which consists of Urine talking the crowd through what bands really get up to backstage while their fans are out front chanting for their return, before ‘On With The Show’ is played over the loudspeakers and Jimmy Urine hams it up, dancing and miming along. Your usual encore it isn’t, but MSI have always liked to do things differently.
With their complete disregard for convention, it is unlikely MSI will ever appeal to the masses but, as long as they are capable of delivering performances as good as tonight’s, they will remain a much-loved cult secret for many years to come.

Review by Jessica Thornsby

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