Two Wounded Birds - The Social, Little Portland Street, London - January 11th 2011 (Live Review)
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Written by Hayley Taylor
It may still be January, but summer made a brief appearance at The Social last night for the monthly ‘Huw Stephens Introducing’ gig. Just when you thought you’d heard the last of wanting to ‘go surfing’, Two Wounded Birds are bringing beach style surf-rock back with force this year.
Whether you’re a fan or The Drums or not, you can’t fault them for nurturing this little gem of a band by taking them on as their tour support last year and aiding the release of debut EP ‘Keep Dreaming Baby’.
They don’t put on a show quite like their mates, but Two Wounded Birds go deeper than the ‘California Dreaming’ pop-rock.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the band had spent the last few years fine tuning their sound on an American beach, but in fact they’re from Margate. A physical mismatch in the form of a 50s throwback singer, a brooding blonde and two scruffy guys, but musically they’re a dream.
‘Keep Dreaming Baby’ is coloured with hazy sunshine and tainted with a wistful melancholy. ‘Summer Dream’ owes a lot to Eddie Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ with its 50s intro riff and to just about every Beach Boys song with it’s ‘woo, woo’ harmonies and repetitive chorus.
But the sunshine does escape the room at points and a dark cloud descends on tracks like ‘I’ll Come and Get You’. We get a brief moment of darkness as front man, Johnny Danger, tells us to “Side step your lover so you can commit your sins”. They channel The Doors in ‘My Lonesome’ and ‘Night Patrol’ with psychedelic strumming, creating eerie, brooding, stripped back records that hush the room and send gentle ripples through the crowd.
The band take on the dreamy surf pop genre with their contagious, amiable sound and juxtapose it with the melancholy, dejected lyrics they throw into the mix. They’re a band with imagination and originality and they’re going to get under your skin.
From these little ripples, this band are going to make big waves in 2011.
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They don’t put on a show quite like their mates, but Two Wounded Birds go deeper than the ‘California Dreaming’ pop-rock.
