Sennen @ Club AC30

Sennen @ Club AC30

21 July, 2008
by: Marcus

There is something very appealing about the unconventional layout at Industry. Equidistant from Liverpool Street and Old Street, straddling the divide between Shoreditch cool kids and the braying City slickers we encounter upstairs could prove tricky. However, descending into the underground lair that hosts tonight’s musical offerings, the venue reveals it’s younger, scruffier side. A collective sigh of relief can be heard by all.

Tonight’s hosts, Club AC30, pull off an even more impressive feat – we’re willing to bet that experimental shoegaze isn’t exactly in most Hoxditch scenesters’ list of favourite things. Yet, with a rotating line up of quality bands, they continue to present this oft-derided genre to the masses and bring in the crowds. Tonight’s headliners Exit Calm are regulars (they’re playing here tomorrow as well) but it is Sennen, a four-piece from the darkest depths of East Anglia that demand the attention.

Cathy Dennis, Alan Partridge, Trisha...let’s face facts; Norwich won’t be winning any Capital of Culture contests anytime soon. Happily, these guys neither “A-Ha!” nor sport absurd hair weaves, instead launching cloud-bursting guitar rockets towards planet ‘nu-gaze’, complete with some Simon and Garfunkel-esque melodic cooing.

With a seemingly erudite knowledge of all things noisy and multi-layered, they bounce easily from Jesus and Mary Chain-style rocking out, to the sort of soaring, cinematic walls of sound that Explosions in the Sky would make if they suddenly woke up and decided to be a pop band, which is actually a very good thing indeed.

Even a few of the suits from upstairs have wandered down to gawp. All the usual reference points are there, from Mogwai to MBV and back again, but they perform with a level of equanimity and telling restraint which suggests that, given the chance, they would quite happily blast out seven-minute epics to a crowd of thousands.

They’d certainly command a hell of a lot more attention than a po-faced skaghead peddling faux-poetry, and yet it’s Doherty who sells out the Albert Hall. What a cruel world we inhabit.

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Marcus