If there’s anyone feeling deflated in the room by Mr Marsh’s cancellation, it only takes a couple of songs by The Great Malarkey to cheer them up again as the folk-punk Mariachi rave-up of “She Said” kicks into gear followed by excellent former single “Merry Profits”. Now signed up to Clearcut Records (the good folks responsible for tonight’s gig), their album is due for release in 2012 and it might just be worth sneaking an early bet on it in the “Album of the Year” stakes if it lives up to tonight’s gig. The thing that makes this particular Malarkey so great is that over the past twelve months they’ve been expanding their sound to take in Clash style reggae-punk workouts (“Badman”), hyper-speed sea shanties (“Buckets of Blood”) and humourous odes to the hellhole that is Dalston Job Centre (“Moneybags”). Rest assured that if they play their cards right then 2012 could be a very good year for this band.
After the sheer presence of the Great Malarkey, headliners the King Cheetah unfortunately can’t quite follow it up. They’re a solid band from across the pond who owe a bit of a nod to early Nirvana (think “Bleach” or “Incesticide” rather than “Nevermind”) with their scuzzed-up power riffing and it works well enough, it’s just that it falls a bit flat after what’s gone before (we shall quietly gloss over their rather ill-advised attempt to whack these dynamics on to a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair”). I think if I’m completely honest here I’d need to go and see ‘em again on their own terms to really judge them properly.
Not a bad night out in the end all told. Hopefully we’ll be seeing another Clearcut showcase around here some time soon.
Certainly tonight’s shown if anything that this is a label with a fair bit of promise to it, especially if the forthcoming Malarkey album delivers in the way the stage show does.
Words by Andy James, pictures by Karen Hammond.
