The night of music selected by Uncover on the 29th of March at The Sunflower Lounge was kickstarted by Small World Theory with their cover of ‘Covet’ by Basement: true to the original but featured the band’s own style and presence. Keeping the drums going through the transition into their first original, ‘Hentacoop’, set the scene for a fluid set. ‘Hentacoop’, to be featured on their upcoming EP, showcased the band’s continued enthusiasm with its vocal-like and reverb-heavy guitar lines that characterise their sound, and demonstrated a different dimension to singer Rue’s voice. Small World Theory’s cover of ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ showed a brighter and lighter dimension to the band as a whole, whilst still retaining their rock edge. Their choice of covers, including ‘Dive’ by Talkers and ‘Nice Dream’ by Radiohead tell us of their inspirations, the distorted, trippy and warm sound of the latter to close their set summarised their instrumental direction well. Small World Theory will be one to watch for sure – with more performances will come the confidence for the band to try and engage the crowd more and to showcase the full range of talents in the band, which will surely make them a formidable act.
One of the perks of the Sunny as a small venue is their social bar space upstairs which enables you to talk to some of the bands performing each night. Having had the opportunity to catch up with some of Small World Theory before the gig it’s clear that the band have good chemistry with each other, and you can see that shine through in the way they presented themselves on stage.
Shortwave opened their set with ‘Entertainment’. Having previously seen Shortwave perform on the 26.01.24 as part of Magic Garden Live, it was lovely to see their consistently strong musical performance was accompanied by a growth in their showmanship and stage presence. The use of synths makes their brand of indie rock feel modern and fresh, and their writing clearly communicates a sense of pace, progress and urgency. Fans of The Killers and Stereophonics will enjoy their sound. The crowd were clearly feeling this revival of what is often fondly called 2000s dad rock as the room filled out for their performance, and they had good banter with the front rows. Their set ended with their recorded but unreleased song ‘Delusions’ whose release they teased for this summer: I can see that this will be hotly anticipated.
Funeral Plans were the final support and an alternative offering to the evening. Their combination of live and playback performance was evocative of industrial inspirations such as Nine Inch Nails and the raw emotion of Title Fight’s ‘Shed’. The high contrast between the melodic work of the bassist and lead guitarist and the screams of the lead singer kept the audience on their toes. Their multi-dimensional, discordant and experimental style embodied the rough and unfinished approach of the aforementioned possible inspirations. The crowd watched singer Rad explore the potential of his instruments in the moment. They worked the crowd the most intensively, with the singer and guitarist getting off the stage and getting into the crowd, even handing over the rhythm guitar for a crowd member to play. Through the artistic identity they adopted on the stage, you got a real feel for their conviction and commitment to their style – I can best summarise their performance with the quote ‘art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable’ attributed to Cesar A Cruz. It will be interesting to see where the refining of their playback hybrid performance act takes them.
The hazy, droning intro of headliner Our Worlds Collide re-centred the evening on a celebration of indie, this time with a focus on shoegaze. The easy groove of their music filled the room with a cinematic, wistful and longing energy that executed the best of shoegaze. Their songs flowed seamlessly from one to the other and their enthusiasm and passion was clear. A highlight of their set for me was their drummer whose playing anchored the feel of their music. The vocalist played with such conviction that his tremolo fell off twice but it did not hinder their performance. I would’ve loved to have heard more from the band about the tracks they were playing and it might have helped the crowd differentiate between their tracks better, but overall Our World Collide showed us a well executed performance that sets an exciting precedent for their future growth.