BABY STRANGE, CAMDEN ASSEMBLY, LONDON, 28TH SEPTEMBER (LIVE)

Summer is now firmly in the past, you can feel the crisp Autumn air slowly creeping into fruition like a loitering fly that won’t fuck off. Gone are the days of pub gardens and BBQ’s we now enter the apocalyptic era of our seasonal structure. It’s not all bad though, if you can come to terms with the bitterly gloomy weather and relentless rain Autumn can be a pretty sweet time. Demote your shorts and vests to the deepest crevice of your wardrobe and bring forth those beloved winter coats, jumpers and jackets. Also, let’s not forget, this is a period renowned for having one of the best holidays on our calendar……. HALLOWEEN! Fancy dress and house parties galore! Despite all these obvious perks, Autumn is an exceptionally busy time for music. Bands tend to use this annual window to tour new albums/ promote themselves. This is bad news for our bank accounts but fantastic news for our social lives. We’re no exception to this yearly charade, the next few months are jam packed with gig’s from Slaves, Yak, The Wytches, Hello Operator and plenty more. So on the contrary, please refrain from battening down the hatches just yet, keep your record player on full volume and sink your teeth into the plethora of music coming your way.

First up is Baby Strange! Grabbing a ticket to their tour was a no brainer. We we’re extremely impressed with their set at Truck Festival and their debut album, ‘Want It Need It’, is an absolute masterpiece. The bulk of the tour is in their native Scotland but they braved the mammoth drive south to play at London’s Camden Assembly (formerly Barfly) on Wednesday. Most of our followers that dwell in the capital will know of/ have been too the Camden Barfly. It’s an intimate setting debatably smaller than a pub function room. In many ways the setup is much like a pub or a workies, you have the main bar area on the ground floor and through the back and up the stairs is the gig room. However it’s leaps and bounds away from the typical stale and sticky characteristics of a traditional pub. This is modern London; traditional pub venues are an endangered breed. They’ve all been replaced with swanky bars serving chips in teas cups and burgers on plastic trays. It’s a strange world. Don’t be misconstrued though, this is a great venue. Walking up the stairs and through the doors you enter a room with nothing more than a bar at the back and stage at the front. So compact you could throw a shitty paper airplane from one end to the other.

It was rammed when Baby Strange took to the stage. With limited back catalogue of songs to choose from they smashed through their debut album opening with ‘Nude’ and ‘Pleasure City’. Mid set they played a cover of ‘Young Folks’ by Peter Bjoern and John then onto ‘California Sun’ and finally closing with ‘Friend’. Not much needs to be said about Baby Strange their debut album does the talking. It’s raw, visceral garage rock at its finest. But despite being so gritty and dirty they manage to achieve a professional prowess to their music. It’s meticulously written and recorded with prominent sections of melody and class. They’re men of very few words, more than capable of commanding a stage through their music alone they opt out of back and forth exchange with the crowd, stopping only to offer polite thanks to the audience for their support. Baby Strange are made for the live circuit, their lyricism is the polar opposite to poetic prose we hear with bands like Arctic Monkeys. Their approach is primal; it’s straight to the point, no fucking nonsense writing. This is a style that’s easy to absorb in the heat of a gig hall, not much devotion is required you can fully let yourself go to any of their tracks.

The crowd was saturated with a younger demographic who nervously eased their way into preceding’s. This tentative approach wouldn’t last forever though, they eventually mounted eachother’s shoulders and crowd surfed around in circles, impressive for a crowd of this size. Stereotypical features of a riotous punk gig tend to be just as the label suggests……… riotous. But this event didn’t follow that assumed trend. There was an aura of courtesy around the place. The mosh pit couldn’t be described as crazy; it was more like a colourful invite to a bouncy castle party complete with morals and no prejudice. We have suspicion to believe that at least 80% of people in the pit had a vegan, feminist or spiritual background. Friendly violence and raucous behaviour isn’t in their nature. At £8 a ticket we can’t really think of a better way to cure your end of the month hump-day blues. Scrape together the last scraps of September’s miserable paycheck head down to your local, trusty venue and get sweaty with lots of like-minded music lovers. Sounds like a dream right?

The intimate nature of these types of gigs is unmatchable. Having stormed through finale track ‘Friend’ they walked off stage and into the crowd. It’s good to see bands engaging with their fans. Everyone flooded to the bar downstairs after the gig, we managed to catch lead singer/ guitarist Johnny on the stairs and bassist Aidan in the smoking area to show our appreciation. They’re both sound, down to earth lads who were happy to have a quick chat. We bumped into another celebrity guest in the hallway before the gig aswell. Isaac from Slaves was in attendance so again we stopped for a brief chat! To many this will seem hugely OTT but we we’re pretty starstruck to start with. Let’s be real, we listen to Slaves EVERYDAY they are a fucking great band so naturally we were gunna be a little shocked to spot Isaac in a gloomy corridor in Camden on a Wednesday night. Anyway we went full fanboy and asked for a snap. CRIIIIINGEEEE!

Check the full setlist HERE: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/baby-strange/2016/camden-assembly-london-england-5bfdc7f4.html and if you haven’t yet listened to their debut album ‘Want It Need It’ DO IT NOW!