Gersey / Old Man River / The Instant

Andy J Ryan Mar 20, 2023

Gersey - @Newtown, October 6 2006
Kicking off the night was The Instant, a particularly proficient band. Their music is somewhat like Mogwai, but without the sparseness and undulations; it just goes at a fair ol' clip, making a consistent racket along the way.

Old Man River and his band tend to lock together into certain grooves which their songs either have to loosen themselves out of, or more successfully, just flow freely above. When the band followed the old advice to keep it simple (stupid!), their songs and lyrics were at their most effective, such as the tracks La and the sprightly little gem Sunshine.

The band performed without their occasional guest - a monkey-suited tambourinist/dancer/troublemaker - but did attempt to invoke a critter chorus by inviting animal noises from the crowd. The seated audience were each asked to make any animal noise on cue, as if to recreate a zoo, but the band may have received a better response from a packet of animal crackers than they did from the largely uncooperative, disengaged crowd.

Gersey's arrival on the stage got the crowd to their feet and saw the front-of-stage void filled with bodies. The band is touring for the release of their latest album No Satellites, which had a somewhat difficult delivery in the almost four years since its predecessor.

The band has evolved over the years into a bona-fide "guitar band", as seen in the evening's opening track I'm Still Here, which echoes My Bloody Valentine. It is a potent alert that Gersey is back and sums up the journey taken by the band to get here. The two guitars weave through the slow-burning Fire; conscientiously layer steady foundations for more earnest numbers such as Fourteen Shades, Sinners in White and Roll Out the Heartbreakers; and fizz and ring through the pop bursts of No Love and Gracie.

In fact, Gersey could quite readily get away with just their instrumental output alone, such is their effective interaction of instruments. The songs are weightier, given depth by each member of the band. Guitars, drums and keys compete robustly, but with an overall timely feeling; there's no sound that has to be reined in. Songwriter Craig Jackson has also fine-tuned his lyrics, giving them a potency that was previously lacking. Feeling and passion in the songwriting replaces a previous reliance on the rhyming dictionary.

In what is surely the best reflection of the standing this band holds to some (if not all) in attendance), a wedding proposal was made and accepted during the set. There was even a dance-off, with the prize being one of the band's T-shirts.

So came Searchlights, the last track on of the album and of the set, and off strode the new and improved Gersey. It was such a grand launch that I wouldn't have been surprised if the Queen had emerged to break a champagne bottle on the side of the stage, bidding the album a safe journey. There are few bands who could hold the attention throughout a set of entirely new material. As a final gesture the crowd were rewarded with a stirring encore of Crashing, Baby, You're a Strange Girl and Look to the Sun to remind us all what a jolly good band Gersey already were and what a great band they have become.