Montreal-based Ought have come back to London to promote their second album 'Sun Coming Down'. An album that has you on edge, one that is full of vibrancy, but yet is a bit derivative of their influences. This is very much the case in a live setting to it has thrills and spills but you get the idea that it veers towards alternative karaoke a bit too often.
There's bits of Sonic Youth, Talking Heads, The Fall and a whole host of other bands who belong in everyone's record collection and its put together with a jagged frenetic nature such as on 'Passionate Turn'. This isn't to say the band are devoid of their own ideas, in fact they put them together with an admirable focus that has seen them gain a cult following. Yet sometimes they wear their heart too firmly on their sleeves whereby you don't know exactly where they are going with it with a mish mash of ideas never really sprouting into anything beyond just that. 'The Combo' early on in the set was one such track that seemed to lack purpose.
The vocal styling of frontman Tim Darcy is in huge debt to David Byrne, conversational, sarcy, accentuated with a finger wag here and there you can imagine the whole thing being practiced in a mirror as a teenager. They do say imitation is the best form of flattery and plus I'd rather someone mimic David Byrne that just about every other front man through the annals of pop history.
There were moments of sheer delight as well as with the gut busting 'Gemini' near the end. Full of rambunctious glee that it nearly pulled the gig out of the bag and for many there it was a triumph. For me though it was too little too late as it mostly washed over me to be forgotten forever.
FUTURE GIGS
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