Uzi and Ari at Bardens Boudoir

Uzi and Ari at Bardens Boudoir

19 January, 2009
by: Katuschka

Thursday night, and I'm off to current den of coolness, Barden's Boudoir in Dalston to check out up-and-coming Utah band Uzi and Ari and a charmingly eclectic ensemble of indie bands in London's quote-unquote thousandth new hotspot. Soon we will run out of London and be forced to declare Middlesex achingly hip.

First up, the ludicrously monikered Spaghetti Everywhere, who channel the whimsical British charm of Pete Doherty and Razorlight; singing in mockney accents, dressed in quirky knitted hats and wearing toy keyboards around their necks, their songs were enjoyable, if a little unadventurous, gently cajoling us into a mellow cheeriness.

Master and Servant, about whom I feel sceptical as they launch into their set with MC-ing, backwards caps and some kind of nervous-tic dancing, do the old switcheroo and turn out to be the best band of the night. They have the whole crowd dancing along to their thudding electronica and Dave Kilgour inspired vocals. Synth keyboards, lots of enforced hand clapping, and some distorted vocals make for gloriously cheesy fun with tongues firmly in cheeks. Even more endearingly, between songs, drummer Nathan has to stop to tell his proud (and vocal) mother and grandmother to be quiet so the crowd can hear him.

Lonely Ghosts are the typical, skinny-jean clad band who drift on and off NME covers and float through festival C-stages like tartan blurs. Their songs inch toward the punky, but never really leave the bland indie safeness of pained vocals, basic guitars and what I like to call the really-need-to-pee dance. Bands like Lonely Ghosts could well be on the verge of greatness or might just as easily become superfluous victims of shifting trends. Time will tell with this band.

Uzi and Ari finally arrive onstage at the near tube-missing time of 11pm and play songs from recent album Headworms. Considering the jangly pop, electronica style of the line up, Ben Sheppard's introspective folk style seems an unusual choice for frontman, but the crowd happily sways along to drifting, melodic songs such as Mountain/Molehill and Wolf Egg. Sheppard is a competent and confident performer and heart-rending vocals and an exhaustive musical range make them a thrilling and effective live band.

It's just as well really, considering how much hyperbole has been used in relation to this band, the kind of flowery, adjective heavy prose usually reserved for teenage love poems. So it appears that Sheppard has struck a chord on the guitar strings of indie kid hearts, and they have been deemed serious enough for weighty theoretical discourse along the lines of 'Uzi & Ari leave us a message in foggy window panes. It politely requests our attention, asking us to provide our own hot breath to make the message legible again'. Hot breath requests aside, Uzi and Ari could possibly benefit from more Animal Collective style experimentalism, or some Sandro Perri sombreness, and at all costs should veer wildly away from the bottomless trapdoor of The Fray/Shins/etc.-style mawkishness.

All in all, an assortment of sweet indie treats, with just the right balance of genres, of which Uzi and Ari are the cherry on the cake, some gorgeous, folky poetry to calm and elate you before the mad dash for that last train.


Check out what's on at Barden's Boudoir

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Katuschka