Reviews

The Magic Gang- Casting a Melodic Spell Upon Liverpool

Apr 26, 2016 1153 views No Comments

Live at Studio 2, Parr Street, Liverpool. Sunday 24th April, 2016.

The Magic Gang, self-titled “melody makers and vibe crafters” from Brighton can make your breaking heart crack a smile, even when that’s the last thing you want to do. In fact, they could probably make you feel upbeat if they were singing about the Texas Chainsaw massacre. Their melodies are catchy, pure, “wind-down-the-car-window” summer rockpop. Let’s say the Beatles and the Beach Boys have disbanded and formed a supergroup on the south coast of England. I suppose that they are technically beach boys, living where they do, and that carefree seaside living filters through. In fact the first song on their recent EP, Lady, Please has a dreamy melody that would not sound out of place on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

Lady Please is also the first song in a great set and is followed by She Doesn’t See and Jasmine, in the same order as they appear on the EP. The Isley Brothers invoke the domestic bliss of a heady summer day, “Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.” The Magic Gang are Brighton’s Doctors of Feelgood, with their very own Jasmine, which still sounds positive even with lyrics like, “Smile like it’s true” and “When the sky turns from blue, starts to rain on you.” I think you can hear the sound in your head now, even if you’ve never heard a single one of their songs. As they power though their back catalogue the crowd gradually gets with the groove, picks up the pace, surges forward and starts to sway, bounce and raises arms in time to the music.

The last time I saw the Magic Gang was at the Flying Vinyl Festival in Hackney and this Liverpool crowd seemed really tame in comparison. It’s partly due to the numbers but also in part due to them being less well known in these northern parts. I’m sure audiences here will cotton on. In fact, once the audience had warmed up they did join in the singing on All This Way. In Hackney there were problems with a barrier surge and the Magic Gang had to stop playing to restore moshing order. Luckily tonight Jack’s back, which he pulled while singing in London, had healed and he and Kristian’s delivery were both top notch, ably supported by Angus on bass and Paeris on drums.

Feeling Better always sounds like that chilled out, well crafted, Bacharach influenced song that Blossoms release on each of their EP’s. There is, again here, a very clever juxtaposition of the lyrics “you left me in the dark, black and blue right from the start” with the overall melodic ambiance and the surfesque “ooh ooh ooh ooh” in the instrumental break. “I just hope that you’re feeling better now” is the repeated refrain, a lament for a broken relationship. All That I Want Is You, on the other hand, sounds at times musically like an updated 70’s song for 2016. Think Grease soundtrack, It’s So Funny How We Don’t Talk Anymore, Silver Lady.

In No Fun, which was their debut single, a seven note fuzzy bass riff takes you by the hand and leads you, via Gary Numan, or some dark, pastiche German electropop to a place of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana that is. This is garage grunge at its utter best. In fact the whole twelve song live set gives you a much more distorted, rocky sound than you get on the EP, without deviating for one minute from the melodies that are woven in your consciousness.

So, although there wasn’t the exuberant euphoria and manic moshing of the Hackney gig, the Liverpool crowd still left Studio 2 enchanted, sprinkled with the magic melodic dust cast by the Brighton tunesmiths.