Thursday 25/05/06 The Longcut, We Start Fires @ Academy 3, Manchester

Tonight is going to be a big night; it’s the final date of The Longcut’s latest tour and it’s in their very wet hometown of Manchester, excellent! So let's make sure we’ve got everything… camera crew (check), local scenesters (check), the obligatory group of weed smoking, beer lugging Oasis fans present at every big (well, signed) Manchester gig since 1994, (CHECK). Let the mayhem commence!

It’s up to We Start Fires to put their name to the test and heat this crowd up, sauntering on stage like Elastica for the naughties, three hot ladies (and the drummer) take on Manchester with well posed instruments, armed with one worded song titles like ‘Strut’ and ‘Magazine,’ indeed an appearance from Justine Frischmann would have you doubting the year is 2006. Unfortunately these ladies need to grow some Frischmannesque bollocks in order to deal with the kind of rubbish stemming from the mouths of the aforementioned Oasis fans (a small minority we hasten to add). Gripes aside, when they’re actually playing (and not partaking in nauseating banter with pissed up Loaded subscribers), WSF put on a decent show, but they don’t transcend the average, and without the stage presence of rocks female forerunners, there’s barely a flame from a gas cooker, let alone a raging inferno on show.

Alternatively, The Longcut have the crowd mewing from their cream covered hands. Posing an unlikely guitar saviour, yet wielding a drumstick like a bow to renegade violins, the stage comes alive…the crowd goes crazy…and Lee takes his place within the revered brotherhood of potential guitar greats. Storming through a set of rapidly growing classics including ‘Late Night Bus’ and ‘Transition’, their performance is indicative of early The Cooper Temple Clause sets, creating vibrant, volatile and vivacious soundscapes, enticing the crowd into a tempestuous frenzy, alcohol and legs tossed in the air, only to return like fallen angels from the brink of experimental indie ecstasy.

'Gravity In Crisis', beats at the hunger pangs of expectancy for the bands forthcoming debut album, and loved like an old friend, yet adorned in surprise like a new lover, it moves from the teases of foreplay to darts of climatic rapture leaving the audience thirsty in anticipation. Stuart’s multi-tasking abilities are put to the test and mastered as he moves from vocals to keyboard to drum kit, helping to create the full, varied and acute sounds which attack the ears from varying angles, encouraging ranges of emotion.  Somehow the evening wouldn’t be complete without a romping dirty bass line lead performance of The Source’s ‘You Got The Love’, “that’s the last time we’re ever going to do that,” shouts Stuart to a more than elated crowd, grateful for the drops of genius added to such a classic track.

Finishing on ‘A Quiet Life’, Gigwise is fairly confident that a quiet life may not be in store for The Longcut, blokes clamber over one another to grab at Lee’s hand, indeed, if tonight is anything to go by, then this band are hero’s in the making and their experimental indie rock/dance amalgamation is destined to shake up dance floors and encourage true Rock n Roll messy fanaticism from a new (and old) generation of sexed up bass line loving music fiends, leaving post-coital dizziness in its wake.  

Photos by: Shirlaine Forrest