It is on to Sub89 to catch Are You Listening headliners Big Special.

In a parallel universe, we are instead watching The Pink Diamond Revue, Alien Chick’s, White Magic For Lovers and Anna Erhard. However, as we managed to miss Big Special not once, but twice at Reading Festival last year, it would feel extremely rude to miss them a third time.

Shelf Lives

Getting down earlier to get a decent spot gives us the opportunity to catch the back end of Shelf Lives set. It is another venue where the lighting is disappointing. Unlike the Facebar with its poor fixed set-up, Sub89 has tonnes of moving lights. The problem is the majority are facing in the wrong direction for these performances. Everything is back lit. It isn’t terrible, but there is a problem when the front five rows of the audience spend more time better lit than the bands on the stage.

We did give everything a cursory listen on the AYL? line-up, but on the basis of this, we skipped through Shelf Lives a little too quickly. There is much to appreciate here. Sabrina Di Giulio and Jonny Hillyard have been working together for about five years. Their earliest music was thrown together using an IPhone drum beat programme and Logic. Jonny is the only live musical element in guitar and the rest comes out from the laptop.

Their sound is electro-post-punk veering into scuzzy rock and occasionally more industrial sounds. The guitar playing works strongly with the material they play, the singing has bags of attitude with a good back and forth in the vocals, though Di Giulio does the heavy lifting. Well worth checking out.

Coach Party

Coach Party come across as an incredibly nice band. If you were being forced to be friends with one of the bands on the AYL? line-up you could definitely do worse than these guys. They are are also extremely competent. They write solid songs and they deliver them well.

Coach Party occupy a range of ground musically. There is rock, there is indie-pop, the odd track leans grungier or skate-punk. Lyrically, they sneak in important messages into frivilous sounding tracks.

In a saturated music market I am not sure they have quite enough to make them stick out from the crowd. If you did catch them though they will entertain you whether you know the tracks or not. They make a good festival act with their cheeriness and familiar sounding tunes that give you a good kind of deja-vu feeling.

Big Special

How do you describe Big Special to someone who hasn’t come across them? They are back to front as a live band. Most bands that don’t have a full line-up for live performances ditch the drums as it is hard to take them around in a car. Big Special only have the drums live, played very well by Callum Moloney, everything else comes through the laptop. Joe Hicklin is the vocalist, whilst he can sing with talent as ‘BLACK DOG/WHITE HORSE’ most clearly showcases, it is more often spoken performance poetry. The music has a lot of punk sensibilities, though at times it bleeds more into dance.

The secret of their success over the last year has definitely been their Black Country honesty. Their vision of post-industrial Britain hits hard with wry observations. The sense of humour shines through often in this live perfomance.

Joe has very much clocked the crowd. “Is this a bit of a 6 Music Dad Festival?” There is a roar from the audience. “You can almost hear the craft ale in that roar.” A lady in the crowd shouts out, “What about 6 Music Mums?” Joe shakes his head. “Six Music Dad is not a gendered term. We all have a little Six Music Dad inside us.”

Everything you would want to hear is present in this hour long set. ‘I MOCK JOGGERS’ and ‘SHITHOUSE’ go down well. ‘BLACK DOG/WHITE HORSE’ is of course the highlight. It is a country mile beyond anything else they have released so far, a very special song that shows they have a significant amount of talent. ‘TREES’ is posibly the best example of the weird hybrid musical worlds they walk so very well.

Close to the end Joe disappears into the crowd with a cymbal. He sings and hits along from within the middle of joyous onlookers.

It is a very strong hour with a top notch, committed performance. They are out and about at various festivals and shows over the summer, seek them out.