Reviews

Local restaurant-come-venue The Doghouse is known, more than anything, for having the island’s best cover bands playing along with choice tribute acts imported from the UK. But, every now and they throw a curve ball that knocks you for six, and tonight that’s what they did.

The Swallows.

With two great local bands playing predominantly original music The Doghouse was really rocking to the 'balls out' rock of The Nelkons and, before them, Guernsey's premier 'lady-band' The Swallows.

The Swallows' music falls into the kind of area that lazy music journalists often refer to as indie, though to tar them with this brush would really be something of an insult to the band as their music is far deeper than what 'indie' generally implies.

Lady K of The Swallows.

Combining punk, post punk, grunge and any number of other sounds that came to prominence in the 1980's and 90's, they mix mellow and intense sounds to create a musical style that is very much their own.

This really stood out on the songs they covered in their own unique style, particularly the cover of Kylie's 'I Believe In You' and a 'sexed up' rendition of Sex Pistols classic 'Submission'.

Alongside these covers tracks such as 'Wildman' and 'Hey Sailor' really showed what the band are capable of thanks to the combination of singer Sister Ray's unassuming charisma and the rest of the bands often simple, but undeniably effective, musicality.

Mama Fox of The Swallows.

While their style of music isn't really the sort to fill a dance floor on a Friday night, The Swallows got a good number of the people in the packed bar listening and by their final two numbers, the aforementioned Pistols cover and 'Don't Give Up' they were firing on all cylinders and left the crowd wanting more.

Following The Swallows came a band that can only be described as one of the islands top party bands, sci-fi inspired (though it doesn't show in the music) rockers, The Nelkons.

Lisa and Chris of The Nelkons.

Blasting off with full force The Nelkons style of rock takes a bit of everything, throws it into a blender and serves up a slice of rock covering everything from classic rock to mod via glam.

What really stands out about the band is their charisma on stage and ability to connect with the audience, especially in the case of the bands two vocalists Mark Guppy and 'Rocqchick' Lisa Vidamour, who, in a true highlight of local performance, got a member of Guernsey's Siam Cup winning rugby team on the dance floor and proceeded to up the heat in the room with a bit of raunchy dancing that ended up with a topless rugby player!

Mark of The Nelkons.

But The Nelkons aren't only about performance as they have the tunes to back it up and they showed that tonight with non-stop barrage of top quality rock 'n' roll which proved so popular the audience didn't want them to leave even after a storming encore of Monkees classic ‘Last Train To Clarksville’.

Tonight the stage definitely belonged to The Nelkons who deserved their headlining Friday night slot more than any cover band or UK tribute act ever could. Though that's not to discredit The Swallows who put in a great performance, but I don't think were totally suited to the party atmosphere present in The Doghouse tonight.