Bordeauxxx – Paper Dress, Shoreditch, August 31 2012
By Iain Orkisz
Located amid the vibrant colourful social hub that is the former metropolitan borough of Shoreditch, Paper Dress could easily be lumped alongside any of its vintage-clothing-distributing peers within the nearest square mile. Of course, they are much more than that. Alas, this isn’t a glorified plug for the store, but the main beautiful aspect that stands them out from their peers is their rather comprehensive calendar of musical events over the course of a weekend.
Indeed tonight’s billing offered the young vibrant colourful hub-bearers a musical variety incorporating all the necessary ebbs of the how-music-makes-one-feel spectrum.
Openers Big Sixes are four post-teenage lads from the home counties, the kind whose head would usually explode with awe at the prospect of playing big bad London on a Friday evening. Indeed they admitted “this is only our tenth gig,” though the occasion hardly troubled them. This was actually their third London gig. Admittedly their energy and crowd rapport compensated for the limited depth of their twenty minute set, but file under ‘ah-yeah-I’ll-have-a-look-at-them-again-they-might-be-alright-y’know.’
Not riding high in the energy stakes, Hella Better Monster delivered a more pensive ambience, owing a small debt to Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and Warpaint. The absence of a drummer further highlighted an air of detachment from convention, which made them all the more charming. Plus the bass player’s Husker Du t-shirt added him a semi-permanent home in my good book.
What to say about Surrey-bred headliners Bordeauxxx, other than the difficulty in adding extra consonants to a French noun thus nullifying the intended silence when referring to said consonant. Digressions aside, this five piece, the type of band the music press wouldn’t give a second thought about pigeonholing as ‘cheery indie-popsters’, doubtlessly overdosed on Sunny Delight and multi-vitamins over an extended period between 1998 and 2002, then spent the remainder of the time on permanent holidays consisting only of beaches and Los Campesinos records on loop. Of course to look at them you would assume they would regular young people of the 21st century with student debt and domestic utility bills to mull over.
Alas, the only complainant of the night was self-proclaimed ‘token girl bassist’ Amy Bache over her lack of a Busted-style radio-mic to accommodate the lack of mobility in being squeezed into a corner of the shop window stage. At a time when the fan is the constant receptacle of the brown stuff, Bordeauxxx offer a brighter perspective.