Venue: The Garage
Date: 24.02.2015
by Fraser Bryce
I haven’t seen a band grow like Marmozets in a long time. A week after the release of their frankly brilliant debut album, ‘The Weird and Wonderful Marmozets’, last September, I saw them at a packed out King Tut’s and, even then, it was clear there was something special about the band. Fast forward five months, and they’ve packed out the 700-person capacity Garage.
But will the songs still hold up? Will their slightly weird, math-rock tendencies translate well into the larger venues? By Christ they do. When the band take to the stage and the opening blast of ‘Move, Shake, Hide’ comes roaring – and I mean roaring – out of the PA, the near capacity crowd erupts into absolute bedlam, singing every word back at the noticeably impressed band members.
Songs like ‘Is It Horrible?’ and ‘Born Young And Free’ are bona fide anthems, and the latter has a breakdown so heavy that it feels like your skull is going to cave in, while more mellow, almost psychedelic songs like ‘Captivate You’ and ‘Back To You’ keep their more math-rocky tendencies at bay. And here we arrive at the reason why I am constantly amazed at the mass appeal of Marmozets; unlike other bands who abandon their more oddball sounds in order to get on radio and TV, Marmozets have not sacrificed one iota of their ‘other’ side, with songs like ‘Particle’, which has the most thunderous bass riff I’ve heard in years, and ‘Vibe Tech’, which I’m pretty sure is in a time signature with a decimal point in it, are just as brutal as their early EPs. What Marmozets have managed to do is capture that insanity and somehow mix it in with a more accessible sound to create one of the most unique bands in the UK right now.
Naturally, with songs as complex as these, you need an incredible level of talent to be able to play them. And if there’s one thing that Marmozets have by the truckload, it’s talent. Guitarists Sam Macintyre and Jack Bottomley are probably the best guitar duo in the world right now, pulling off mind-bogglingly intricate licks and riffs without even breaking a sweat; bassist Will Bottomley and drummer Josh Macintyre are tighter than a gnat’s chuff, never missing a beat even while trashing about like maniacs – and wearing a suit in Josh’s case – and frontwoman Becca Macintyre. Jesus Christ, what a voice. Capable of going from a haunting siren’s wail to a scream that comes from the very depths of Hell itself in the same breath.
As the band leave the stage after closing with ‘Why Do You Hate Me?’, I have the same thought I had at King Tut’s in September: “We’ll never see them in a place this small again”, perhaps proven by the fact that they were announced for the main stage at Reading Festival earlier the same night. These two sets of siblings from Bingley are going to be the biggest band in the world in a few years’ time, and I for one cannot wait to see the Hydro going apeshit to ‘Vibetech’.document.currentScript.parentNode.insertBefore(s, document.currentScript);
