6Music Night 3, Warmduscher, the Squid and Bombay Me
The final night of the 6Music festival smushed together three acts of kindness at the Electric Ballroom. Showering, cephalopods and bicycles are all well within the 6Music purview, and, of all the three events I’d attended this weekend, the atmosphere here was the most febrile.
Warmduscher, of the people I spoke to, this was the band I most wanted to see.
Are they a caricature, a deadly serious dive bar band, or the Gorillaz slipped into 3D and manifest in human meat?
Don’t ask too many questions, don’t get too many lies. If you wanted to feel the spirit of rock and roll ba-by, it was on Sunday night at the Electric Ballroom.
1000 Whispers was my personal highlight of the bleaching. There’s a place in your brain which only responds to a man in cowboy hat and all-white tracksuit, pumping his fist and telling you to dream.
Nuha Ruby Ra joined this dirty group of uncles on stage for Disco Peanuts. It looked like a farewell to something, Whale City? Are we coming or going?
Eminently singable songs coming from a Hackney warehouse you hope will not be turned just yet into a new-build memorial to creativity. Yikes.
Squid come on next, waving a bit of a tree. Steve Lamacq introduces them, then appears in front of me, having a nice dance. Then disappear – mandated half-hour work break. Take it or lose it.
Cephalopods aren’t known for being raucous or especially edgy, but this specimen is angular and not at all what I thought a squid would sound like. As a mid-point in the line-up, Squid worked wonderfully. Taking the energy of Warmduscher and applying a bit of speed and shine to the corners. The sound of the evening took this wonderful turn from disco to post-punk before the headliners flexed some serious experience on what was now a very inebriated audience.
Bombay Bicycle Club – now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while…
The stage is set beautifully, some noise-field neon mountains slide off into the far corner. As a band who always sounded full as a glass of milk, the transition into new mylk and other dairy free fillings is one to be enjoyed.
Something seemed to slip off after a strong opening, with horns blaring and tension rising. I was locked in conversation at the back with a young man who makes bespoke mirrors.
If the set had ceased to move me, I was in the minority. Put me on your shoulderssss. There she goes on his shoulders. Men dancing, women, also dancing. This is what NME fans look like 10 years on.
They save the best till last, spoilers, it’s the biggy. And my god, I haven’t felt like that since I was 14. I knew it was coming but it came for me pretty hard. That riff, bobbing along on a sea of simpler times. Crowd singing, they’re a absolute unit these ones, they know what they’re doing.
Check it: