Moses Campbell at the Echo on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
Moses Campbell, you are so young! So full of energy and promises! With singer-guitarist Sean Solomon’s half-laughed, half-cried vocals – as if he had shouted all night but would not give up – they made a beautiful mess of a chaotic noise full of distortion, but, by miracle, everything fell at the right place at the end.
They were opening the night at the Echo on Wednesday, and bands which book them should be aware they may well be stealing the show with their outbursts of distorted guitar, violent riffs of violin and a bass which was backfiring like an old motorcycle. They embodied an exuberance as only youth can do… are they even legal in a +18 club?
They were here to cheer up the crowd, to make everyone dance, mosh and cry, like a joyous gang that could cover the Pogues or the Clash (I could easily envision that), or Clap your Hands and Say Yeah (if you want a younger reference), but instead bring their own mix of explosive and joyous beats, delivered faster than you can follow, with more intensity than you can process.
I had seen them live a year ago, and beside a few changes in the line-up, they seemed to have complete new songs, as I could not recognize most of the ones from their only album.
Five on stage (but it varies), with a violin player but no accordion this time, their extremely lively set was simply fun to watch, and that violin was giving some countrish accents to their punked tunes, all played loud and fast. However, beside the energetic delivery all the songs had in common, there was a large diversity in them,… one more time, a band hard to pigeon hole, which is always a good thing. Pascal Stevenson, the bass player of the band, wrote ‘Crust Pop’ as the genre of their music on their Facebook page,… ha! I don’t know what it is, but it sounds like a delicious pastry or something good.
Moses Campbell started in 2006 when Sean Solomon and Pascal Stevenson were still in high school, and they have been performing with diverse line-ups since 2008 before releasing their debut album ‘Who Are You? Who Is Anyone?’ in 2010 on olFactory Records, Static Aktion and their own record label, No Girls Allowed Records.
During their too short set, they were not holding back anything for sure,… well, it is so good to be young!
