CMJ'S Music Marathon Presents Circa Waves At Pianos, Saturday, October 25th, 2014, Reviewed

Circa Waving Not Drowning

The New York Times was writing about how this years CMJ had a lot of local bands and I guess they might but I saw bands from:

Pizarro, Italy

Stockholm, Sweden

Auckland, New Zealand (actually three from New Zealand)

Sydney, Australia

And the reason we are all here, Liverpool, England. I was really really looking forward to this gig, Crica Wave’s debut EP is really good though in an act of younthful arrogance they opened their set Saturday afternoon at Pianos with their best song, the addictive indie rocker “Young Chasers” with its money in the bank “wooh hook”.

Unfortunately, the set didn’t sustain this high and despite the band being really good, they were too loud and the songs kinda mindmelded together, mores the pity because Kieran Shudall is a born leader and the band have their way with verbak kickers, “a little too young and not enough time” is the sort of line that sraws your attention and the song is really good on record, on stage something isn’t quite clicking.

I blame time and place for this: around the 14th band I’ve seen in a four day period and the third guitar rock band starring 20 something boys in three hours, it is beginning to all sound the same. If you add to that the less then brilliant acoustics at Pianos and your ears turn to jelly. On record the songs signify, at Pianos they seem to lack distinction.

Perhaps if the band was a little chattier, drew us in a little more. They seem a little cool, and this doesn’t help the scousers signify as much more than a job well done when they needed to hit us hard in the solar plexus. Perhaps it was growing pains, they are still very new, but on a bill with Amason and Public Access T.V> you really have to show up. I bet the next time they play here they do it right.

Grade: B