The Riot Tapes, Decomposing in Paris and more...
The Riot Tapes, Decomposing in Paris, City of Stars, Until This Day
Auntie Annies, Thurs 2nd February
Auntie Annie’s is unusually empty for a Thursday night, despite the whopping four band line-up promised. The old saying, “The show must go on,” rears its ugly head from the very beginning, and seems to be a recurring motif for the rest of the evening.
Part one of the evening is a pop-punk emo extravaganza with opening act Until This Day. Influenced by the likes of Paramore, they are loud and angsty, but sadly drown out the vocals of their own lead singer Lisha Fitzpatrick. A few songs in and the band finally find their feet with a few acoustic tracks that let Lisha shine from behind her emo fringe. ‘Autumn’, is far more suited to the venue, and has the audience hanging on every lyric, with one couple in particular deciding to use the song as the soundtrack for a particularly long and drawn out kiss.
City of Stars are next on the bill, armed with the unusual combo of guitar, electronic drums and a laptop. Singer Jess Willis provides her own backing vocals thanks to the wonders of technology, and songs like ‘Electricity’ live up to their name, despite the loud pre-recorded backing track sometimes overtaking the lead singer herself. Disaster strikes when the laptop eventually packs in and City of Stars are left a band member short. However, thankfully the band are armed to the teeth with a number of acoustic ballads until normal service resumes.
Decomposing in Paris have a few false starts of their own before finally kicking off with ‘Personal Ad’. Sleazy bass-lines and tortured lyrics feature heavily in the set list, with ‘Naked’ sounding not unlike a Massive Attack tune. Clearly fond of experimentation, they put a refreshing spin Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ before heading into new territory with a few louder, guitar driven songs. It allows Becca to show her skill as a front-lady, but these brash songs are out of place amidst the chilled out trip hop rhythms that the audience still hadn’t made up their minds on.
It’s now time for the Riot Tapes to finally make their mark on Belfast soil. Reminiscent of the indie synth pop music of Ladyhawke, they’ve been met with a positive reaction in their native Dublin. From the word go, they are clearly a very tight well rehearsed band, with lead singer Elaine Doyle proving her worth as tonight’s headline act. The band plough through the set, treating the audience to their upcoming single entitled ‘The Key’. Perhaps we would have expected a little more crowd-play from a band who are reaching out to new fans and consider themselves headline material, and on a night where the words “The show must go on,” lingered on the lips of each and every front-lady, it seemed that the headline act were the ones to bring it to rather an abrupt end.
Leigh Forgie
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