 | | The Earlies (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
That effect isn’t entirely alleviated when you walk inside and get the feeling you’ve stumbled into a private house party. You almost expect people to be passing out in the bathtub between bands. In some ways though, that makes it the perfect venue for The Earlies - a band who are themselves a cosmic mishmash of opposites, sunny Texas shaking hands with not so sunny Burnley, scorched Beach Boys-esque harmonies dripping into the kind of beats Daft Punk concoct in their laboratory. A band who, on paper, sound as though they’re not going to work live in a million years. Yet, almost surprisingly, they do, providing their audience with a veritable chocolate box of aural treats, and probably breaking a couple of records for how many people can be fit onto a small stage at once too.  | | The Earlies (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
The intimacy of the venue allows songs from both their debut album, There Were…, and follow-up, The Enemy Chorus, to come into their own and shimmer with vitality. One Of Us Is Dead, for example, is as stunning in its melancholy as the lunar eclipse going on above our heads whilst they play. With live performances such as this, the Earlies deserve the kind of fame, fortune and adulation lesser bands have thrown at them for just the mere strum of a three chord tune. One thing is certain. They are the remarkable product of remarkable times. More of this kind of thing please. | 
