Reviews

The St Margaret’s Lodge ballroom once again played host to the Vale Earth Fair as they continue the fund raising drive towards this summer’s open air festival at the Vale Castle at the end of august, and as with all Earth Fair events we were treated to an eclectic mix of music by some of the islands top talent.

The evening started out with a set by the Swallows, an all girl (except for the stand-in drummer) garage rock band in the Pretenders style.

Almost all girl band The Swallows.

While they provided a good solid bunch of tunes they were the first victims of what seemed to be a very unenergetic audience on the night, which was a feeling that remained throughout the evening.

The band battled on managing to lift the energy for a few tracks in the middle of the set and for their closing rendition of ‘Submission’ by the Sex Pistols. However as the singer commented the audience were being very ‘polite’, something that marked the whole night.

Two thirds of Poor Attempt.

Second up were new local band Poor Attempt who, for their first gig together, gave a good showing. Playing fairly standard sub-Blink 182 style pop-punk they all played well as their previous experience on the local music scene would attest, however their protracted between song breaks did nothing to help the speedily dwindling energy in the room.

Hopefully these guys will get the opportunity to play live together more as they definitely had the necessary potential to be more than they showed tonight.

Finally taking the stage was veteran local metal band Mechanical Lobster, and as always they proved totally unpredictable. With singer Stace looking like Guernsey's answer to Till Lindeman, but sounding a hundred times better, they blasted through a set of typical intense industrial metal, even featuring an instrumental track in the middle.

Stace in Silhouette.

However as all three bands did tonight, Lobster seemed to suffer from the lack of energy in the room as what would normally be a storming pit amounted solely to four of five headbangers in front of the stage and a group standing in a semi circle at a polite distance.

In all the music tonight was up to the high standard typically presented at VEF events, however the depleted energy of those in attendance seemed to hamper the atmosphere if the not the musicianship.