CMJ Saturday afternoon at Pianos is legendary and rightly so, one first rate ready to break huge band after another and top of the list this year was the superb Public Access TV, built behind the rock star par excellence, cool as hell John Eatherly. You may remember John from Be Your Own Pet though I don’t because I was too busy cheering on Jemina Pearl. BYOP were really good pop punk with even more muscle and would’ve been big time only Jemina decided she was Gwen Stefani or at least Hayley Williams and left to release a lousy solo album.
A real pity, the one time I saw BYOP they blew me away, still my loss is John’s gain because the man is a great rock star, he looks the part, sings the part, plays LES type classic rock and has a band to beat em all. And a great line in patter, on the epic case builder “Metropolis” he sings “I don’t want to live till I’m forty, I wanna be young and dead.” That’s big time songwriting right there -that’s what we want.
John is great and lead guitarist Xan Aird, formerly of the Virgins (incidentally, when I saw BYOP they were on the same bill as the Virgins) is his equal, in shades and smartness, every song steadies itself on a gorgeous guitar sound, every lead is compact and sharp, the notes are very clean, the sound is indelible, even in Pianos, even with the band playing loud, it keeps floating to the top of your ears, if not the mix.
The songs are about the usual drugs and dollies, and the band has the swagger to pull off a yet another Strokes comparison with boatloads more confidence than Drowners did last year in nearly the same slot. I’d be interested to hear em add some funk rhythms, or at least disco, to the sound, the four on the floor is a little samey but would shake it up nicely. Still, really, when you can pull out a song as catchy as “In The Mirror” half way through the set you’re gonna be on Terra Firma the rest of the way.
The buzz around this band has been loud ever since the NME namechecked em before their first gig everin January and this performance should in no way lessen the din.
Below is “In The Mirror”
Grade: B+
