1990s live at O2 Second Academy 28 April 2009
Glaswegian trio 1990s released a refreshingly plucky debut album Cookies in 2007; it wore its influences unabashedly on its sleeve and captured the hedonistic glee of drugs and girls better than most. This year’s follow up Kicks is more pedestrian with considerably less engaging songs. Can the Rough Traders’ recapture their spark in the live environment?
The answer sadly is a resounding no. Most of tonight’s set struts along somewhere close to Primal Scream at their laziest. Their live performance comes across as a sloppy homage to the prominent rock bands from the seventies through to the nineties. They imitate the Stooges on Kickstrasse, but fail to capture their sinister violence; a chorus that should snarl, meows instead. And the stomp of The Box is so brazenly glam it recalls The Sweet, and that’s not a good thing. The key point is that although their songs can be danceable and enjoyed on a base level, there is nothing vital about them. The lyrics occasionally bristle with sarcasm and hedonistic wit, but more often than not sound like a sloganistic hangover from the lad culture of the nineties as on You Made Me Like It.
Drummer, Michael McGaughrin, cuts an energetic and captivating figure in the middle of the stage. It is his expressive drumming that holds the band together; it is also his vocals on 59 that see the band move away from the soulless struttings of Kicks and create a warmer more subtle sound, reminiscent of The Bluetones. Vondelpark, a rare highlight of Kicks, also stands out tonight with its blend of Born Ruffians’ style funk and early Super Furries’ pop-psychedelia. The delicate guitar phrase creates a rare dynamism and contributes to a more mature and modern sound.
There are a few moments when the enthusiastic vocal interplay or cynical guitar riffs elevate 1990s from a simple, straight-up rock and roll band. However, the garage guitar chug and vocal woos are offered up a little too cheaply and there is not enough invention that engages intellectually. From their name to their sound, 1990s are retrogressive and derivative. In a booze-drenched back room of a pub on a Saturday night, their blend of nostalgia and unsubtle hooks would have been a different prospect; in the sober ebb of a Tuesday evening in the O2’s Second Academy it is dull.
Originally published online at Suit Yourself Magazine.
Read about the gigs of 2009 that did deliver.