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Give It A Name..Incoming - Manchester Academy - April 19th 2009 Light, Emery, The King Blues, The Academy Is.., The Blackout, Enter Shikari
It’s become something of a tradition for Give It A Name to fall on the hottest day of the year. The Sunday showing of the scaled-down and renamed Give It A Name Incoming bill, is accompanied by soaring temperatures and the kind of sunshine we get approximately four times per year. It almost seems a waste of a nice day to head into the Manchester’s Academy, to catch Light’s performance at five o’clock.
The first thing that strikes you about this year’s Give It A Name (or Give It A Name Incoming, to be precise) is how ruthless the scaling-down process has been. Three years ago, when GIAN was last in Manchester, it was held at the Manchester Evening News Arena, and was headlined by the already-massive Lostprophets and My Chemical Romance. Now this once arena-bothering franchise is being held at the box-room of the Manchester Academy, when the annual Taste of Chaos tour routinely sells out the considerably bigger, and grander, Manchester Apollo on the other side of the city.
On top of that, no longer do the doors open at midday, which allowed the hardened gig-goer to sample almost ten hours of solid music on alternating stages. This year, the Academy opens its doors at four o’clock, and there’s no second stage. Everything that made Give It A Name special - the stamina-testing running time; the near-constant stream of bands; the one o’clock until four o’clock stretch where you always discovered at least once ace band you’d never even heard of; the relaxed atmosphere as the crowd settled in for the long haul - all of that is gone. Replacing it is a sub-Taste of Chaos style extended concert. Give It A Name is no longer recognisable.
That’s not to say it isn’t good. Seven bands for £25 is a bargain no matter how you look at it, and Give It A Name prove they still have an eclectic streak when it comes to their first act; Light.
This female-fronted electro solo project turn out a much better performance than they did at the Give It A Name Introduces tour but, conversely, they go down much worse with the crowd (although kudos to the heckler who spent half the set screaming “are you Miley Cyrus?” at the all-American-sweetheart frontwoman.) Light specialises in sugary electro which steals, magpie-like, from all manner of genres: pop, disco, RnB, Euro-pop - everything, apart from rock.
Although the masses gamely lend their voices to Light’s cover of Backstreet Boys hit ‘I Want It That Way,’ on the whole, Light receives one of the worst receptions of any Give It A Name band, ever. There’s a simmering hostility to Light’s frontwoman, who really does look like she could be related to the Hannah Montanna starlet. She couldn’t have less in common with the audience if she tried. But, the instant dislike isn’t confined solely to the frontwoman. When their drummer flips his drumstick into the air and then fails to catch it, in truly spectacular fashion, the jeers and laughter make you wonder whether you’re at Download or Leeds, and not amongst the usually mellow GIAN crowd.
Light exit the stage having failed, you suspect, to win any new fans. This isn’t their demographic, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever grace emo-centric bills again.
Second up are post-hardcore mentallists Emery. After the misjudged electro-fest of Light, Emery sound like the most rocking music you’ve ever heard. It isn’t, of course, but initially they benefit from the bloodlessness of the previous act. Their frenetic post-hardcore/Christian rock is coupled with a ferocious stage presence, as every member tears about the stage in a lunatics-running-through-the-asylum fashion that Slipknot would be proud of.
Long-haired, caveman look-a-like Josh Head is particularly entertaining, as he ricochets between the front rows and the stage, claps his hands, and generally acts the fool inbetween bashing away at the keyboard and howling down the microphone. After the memory of Light’s performance has faded, the crowd do begin to lose interest in Emery. However, they are a perfect example of how acting like a headliner, can make you seem like a headliner. They ooze confidence and, for the first fifteen minutes at least, the audience is completely overwhelmed by Emery’s self-belief, and buy into the band’s headliner-delusions. Emery are an underwhelming post-hardcore band with an overwhelming stage presence. If Emery ever crop up supporting your favourite band, make sure you get there early, because you’re in for a treat.
Later on in the night, Enter Shikari will ask the crowd to “give it up” for all of tonight’s acts, as is customary at festivals. However, The King Blues get a special mention from the Hertfordshire hardcore/electro rockers, for being “the most important band around right now.”
Indeed, The King Blues are GIAN’s most overtly political band. Not only does frontman Jonny ‘Itch’ Fox express his disgust at the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson at the recent G20 protest in London, but he requests the crowd raise their middle fingers in the air, to let the BNP know “just how welcome they are in Manchester.” For a festival that has a history of swaying more towards the pop end of the pop-punk spectrum, such snarling punk sentiments really stand out, as do The King Blue’s politically-infused reggae-punk stylings, with frequent bursts of ukulele thrown in for good measure.
Set highlight is the eclectic ‘Save The World, Get The Girl’ which mixes blissed-out Mediterranean rhythms with street punk lyrics and a funky semi-rap, semi-spoken performance. The King Blues don’t fit into any one genre, and what’s more they don’t seem to care. They’re a band with a message, and a disregard for genre conventions, and what could be more punk than that? It’s no wonder tonight’s headliners are fans.
Next act, The Academy Is… clearly have some fans here tonight. So many in fact, that their filing onstage one by one doesn’t smack of delusions of grandeur. Every band member receives a rapturous reception, with the biggest cheer predictably reserved for pop-punk poster boy William Beckett. The Academy Is… deliver the customary pop-punk combo of shiny, chewy-centred rock with sing along choruses, spring-heeled drumbeats and plenty of onstage pogo-ing.
The Academy Is… are the archetypal Give It A Name band, and therein lies the problem. Last year’s Give It A Name had The Audition, Four Year Strong and You Me At Six; 2007’s Give It A Name had Boys Like Girls, Hit The Lights and Cute Is What We Aim For. Every track on The Academy Is…’s set could have been penned, played and sung by any of the above bands, and it’d still sound exactly the same. There’s nothing fresh or exciting about The Academy Is…’s set. If you love this sort of music, then there’s a steady stream of bands touring and putting out this sort of thing, and it’s becoming boring. The Academy Is… are fun, catchy and get the whole place moving - but next week they’ll be another band who sound exactly the same playing the UK, and that prevents tonight’s performance from being anything out of the ordinary.
Welsh mod The Blackout plough a very similar furrow to The Academy Is… but they replace the squeaky-clean pop sheen with a distinctly punk grubbiness. Mainman Sean Smith wields his microphone like a weapon, swinging it around his head and, at several points during their set, he very nearly clobbers his bandmates with it. The rest of the band tear around the stage with a vigour that would put earlier act Emery to shame. It all adds up to a visceral and riotous performance.
The old Blackout classics are all there, as well as new single ‘We Are The Children.’ Penning a chorus that’s basically just the title repeated over and over, may not win them any awards for lyrical mastery, but it makes for a maddeningly catchy listen. A few minutes in, and the entire room is singing along, and, weeks later, every last person will still be able to run through a decent rendition of this song, guaranteed.
The Blackout also reveal a theatrical side we haven’t seen before. Taking a leaf out of Slipknot’s book, Sean instructs the audience to kneel on the floor and jump up in unison on his command. Blatant rip-off it may be, but it’s one that leaves the entire room grinning. And that perfectly sums up The Blackout’s set: it’s not particularly original or clever, but a fun time is had by all. Finally, a pop-punk band with a ridiculously low combined age and obsessively-pruned hair, whom you won’t feel all that guilty about liking.
You certainly won’t feel guilty about liking Enter Shikari either. Turning down major labels in favour of a DIY ethic, Enter Shikari are a do-it-yourself success story, and an inspiration to every band who can’t land themselves a major label deal, but don’t particularly care. There’s something very likeable about the band members, too. Frontman Rou Reynolds has genuine charisma and a down-to-earth attitude that quite clearly charms the crowd. “We don’t have a lot of time,” he tells the audience halfway through their set “so can you pretend we just did that thing, where we went offstage, and then came back to play more songs?” The crowd gamely play along, cheering and clapping, while guitarist Rory Clewlow quips “hey, we’re back!”
Enter Shikari deliver a high-octane, techo-rock party, with the glitch-heavy, disco-tinged stomp of ‘Sorry, You’re Not A Winner’ inciting the biggest mosh pit of the day.
Enter Shikari may not be an obvious choice of Give It A Name headliner, but with an arsenal of thumping, electro-rock tracks in their arsenal, you have to wonder whether Enter Shikari could fail to get even the most cynical of audiences moving.
It’s undeniable that Give It A Name has been scaled down beyond all recognition. And, with rumours that the organisers weren’t even going to hold a UK version of the festival this year, it’s debatable whether we’ll see another UK GIAN. If this is the case, then it’s a shame GIAN hasn’t expired on the high it should have but, stellar sets from The Blackout, Enter Shikari and The King Blues, means that, despite everything going against it, GIAN delivered once again - just not as much as in previous years.
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