Saturday 2 October 2010

Gig Review: Fuzzy Lights @ The Portland Arms, Thu 30th Sept

Still riding on the high of some fantastic performances at last Saturday's Wish You Were Here Festival, Cambridge's the Portland Arms held another spectacle in the form of local orchestral rock band Fuzzy Lights, who released their second album Twin Feathers on Little Red Rabbit Records last month. The night was made all the more memorable by the two support acts who both successfully proved that less can be more.

First up was Hitchin's own C Joynes, whose nimble and unorthodox playing of both banjo and acoustic guitar, occasionally coupled with hiss-ridden tape recordings, proved utterly bewitching. He was followed by the no-less-impressive You Are Wolf, a one-girl act (save for some sparse bass-playing from her husband) performing  forlorn folk music carefully constructed from vocal loops and melodica. As well as her wide vocal range, her ability to mimic the sound of waves crashing was second to none.

Fuzzy Lights tick all the orchestral/post rock band boxes. Female violinist? Check. Songs that start quietly and then crescendo into behemoths? Check. Guitars played with violin bows? Check. Singing saws? Actually, I wasn't expecting that so much. And that's the thing with Fuzzy Lights; whilst they undoubtedly evoke the likes of Dirty Three and Do Make Say Think, they are no mere copyists. Even the drummer felt the need to stroke his kit with a bow (no euphemism intended). Over the hour-or-so length of their set, Fuzzy Lights continuously wound up their songs into cathartic, yet graceful blasts of noise, steadily increasing the intensity, until they wound everything down again by closing with the gentle swoon of a lap-steel guitar on The Sea & The Heather, the closing track from Twin Feathers. It was a fine ending to a successful homecoming.



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