Phonology

    Anechoic are a young, white t-shirted 4 piece. Their sweet three part harmonies, swooping counterpoint and often sparse, light touches are faintly reminiscent of Crowded House. The crowd of Embrace fans welcome them generously to the Barrowlands. Surprised at the warm reception, the band mention their debut single release Just Like You on 14th March, to rapturous applause. The crowd at an Embrace gig are easily pleased though, and all seem a little bit overexcitable.

    As Embrace take to the stage to a brief intro of gospel and blues, it seems there might be something here to prove. Good Taste perhaps? They have a funny way of showing it. The capacity crowd practically drowns out the band from the first tune of the night - Ashes. Doubtless, Danny McNamara has a mostly effortless pop voice, but if he thinks standing with his arms outstretched, letting the audience do all the work is "working the crowd", he's sadly mistaken. They're at the top of their game, they have fans who love them. It's all too easy to just get plain lazy.

    Their uplifting style of pomp rock really is fairly solid, but churning out turgid anthems one after another seems a fairly pointless task. Music for allcomers? This bland melancholic tripe is music for people who don't actually enjoy music. It's music for chanting along with your drunk mates down the pub on a Saturday night, All You Good Good People being a prime example.

    Brand new material such as Contender gets a groove going, with a fuzz guitar riff, megaphone filtered vocals and ends up a stoned lazy wigout. It may be flawed, but at least there's less of the atonal dirge about it. The crowd can take it or leave it, as they don't know the words.

    If you like music, check out Anechoic, but leave before Embrace come on.

Brought to you in association with the reservoir.