poppedmusic

Estrons

Buyers Club, Liverpool,  September 29th 2017

Words: Gary Lambert
Photos: Elena Katrina

If I could choose any particular night for enjoying a gig in Liverpool it would be a payday Friday. With overtime pay to celebrate, or more likely the need to get over the fact that your bosses are able to get away with paying you so little, there is always a good feeling when the fates align and a brutally good touring band happens to be in town to party with. Friday 29 September 2017 was exactly one of those blue moons as the latest high quality Welsh band off the high quality Welsh band conveyor belt took to Buyers Club to give fans an insight into what is coming with their highly anticipated debut album whenever that may be. Although I’d really like to be next week as I love the music of Estrons.

Supporting Estrons was Boy Azooga. With honesty I can tell you that I was not looking forward to this set as soon as I walked into the room and saw a keyboard draped with Scrabble lights spelling out the act’s name. “Oh God no! It’s going to be a quirky solo act on a Bontempi keyboard like an indie John Shuttleworth” was my prejudiced thought. Once the band (yes, the band!) took to the stage, I felt relieved enough to do the quick search on Boy Azooga that I had previously fought myself from doing in case it pushed me towards a beer and leaving my car in the car park. As careers advisors the world over are employed to tell you, first impressions matter, and Davey Newington (the real life Boy Azooga) and his band came out with a beauty, a track that was reminiscent of Crowded House in terms of their harmonising and how the track had been structured around some real healthy pop sensibilities, but it was underpinned by a bluesy twinge that made sure that the sound was categorised as rock rather than pop. If the venue had any available seating, the track would have made me stand up, and stay standing up as this became the motif of the entire set which saw me get closer and closer to the stage magnetically. Whilst probably better known for playing in Charlotte Church’s Pop Dungeon, I’m sure if the tunes stay like this we will have to be breaking him out of there – unless CC wants to do backing vocals which may not be the best use of her talents.

Now another vocal talent who lacks the fame of Charlotte Church at present is Estrons frontwoman, Tali Kallstrom. Now I don’t believe she was a child classical singing prodigy (apologies to you Tali if you were), but her ability to mix punk rock with dirty dance floor filler as she screams to weave the audience into rapture is far more exciting than Ave Maria. The greatest compliment I can pay on this matter is that every Estrons song sounds like an Estrons song because of how distinctive and identifiable her vocal is. It would be unfair though to make out that Estrons is more along the lines of “Tali Kallstrom and Her Estrons” like “Mick Jagger and His Rolling Stones” (see Keith Richards’ autobiography for details of that falling out). Apart from the drummer in the traditional drummer’s position at the back of the band, the band were started at the front of the stage and generally covered the whole of it in their excited movement throughout. Nobody was expected to shun the limelight – and nobody did in the slightest.

You really need to go to see Estrons now. Their sound and raw energy is made to be played in basement clubs where an overeager moshpit can see you bang your head on a wall. They will energise you with songs like Glasgow Kisses and Strobe Lights, but the biggest moment of their set (and it probably will be for years) is the sublime Make A Man. The greatest songs never seem to have a release date, instead they slip into the conscious and as though they have existed since the dawn of music, and this is one of those songs. Everybody sings or shouts the words back, the collective heart of the audience beats like a lion chasing down prey, and nothing outside of the world matters. Estrons are going to fuck you and fuck you, and long may it continue.

Watch the video for Glasgow Kisses here: