poppedmusic

The Bohicas + Sugarmen + Sankofa

8th October, Loft Art’s Club, Liverpool

Words: Gary Lambert

Opening up the night of three real up-and-comers was Liverpool’s Sankofa. This a band who have allowed their sound to grow into a much heavier beast than previously stalked the stages of Liverpool. Sounding more like an English version of Tito and Tarantula (the house band in From Dusk Til Dawn) than any obvious influences they produced a smart, rapid performance which deserved a bigger audience than an 8pm Support Slot brings for you.

Sugarmen are a live favourite of mine and I have been effusive in my praise of them so far. This time though I had the opportunity to do some thing a bit different. Previously when I had watched them I had been front and centre as generally I had been at those particular gigs with my music fan head on rather than looking to critically examine a band. So I slipped into the back room of The Loft at Arts Club away from the crowd and the band to see what I actually thought of how they sounded. And they sounded brilliant. I am certain in the next two to five years there is one of the great British pop songs in the marble of this band. They need to sculpt it. There is notably the sound of The Clash with the rough edges sanded away, but there are so many other great bands lurking in it too. I was getting memories of The Cure and Dexy’s and that long, hot summer of 1995 when Blur and Oasis went head to head (and were beaten in my memory by Alright by Supergrass which seemed to be played everywhere if not bought in as great numbers).

Further along their career path are tonight’s headline act The Bohicas. Whereas Sugarmen look like kids, The Bohicas are a big grown up band even though they have only just released their debut album. Their sound is big and grown up too taking the best of one of my favourite albums of 2015 and pushing it up a notch to give you a live product which was not just a rehash of the album. Throughout their set song after song seemed to be my favourite of the night. From opening hit Upside Down to mid-set behemoth the fabulously sarcastic, witty and sexy XXX the band rattled through their songs with power and bombast and lashings of cool. For a non-local band the audience was one of the biggest I had seen in The Loft and everybody but the merch stand squeezed into the front room to get as close as possible to the quartet on stage. By the time they reached the end of penultimate song To Die For I was happy with what I had seen. And then they hit us with Swarm. Oh my days! There was anger, violence, volume and danger in it. It sounded magnificent and if it was played by a metal band it would have created chaos on the wooden floorboards. If I wasn’t stood with my iPad and right behind my boss of bosses from work (true story) I would have charged to the front and thrown myself around in front of the band. Instead I took a deep breath and took it all in.

All three bands on this night make me look hopefully towards the future. I cannot wait for the next steps from all of them.

Find the Bohicas on Facebook

Watch the new video for The Making Of here: