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For the past five years, Pretty Girls Make Graves have been one of the most talked about bands amongst the ‘in crowd’. With touts doing healthy business outside the 100 Club, tonight is evidence that their reputation has spread beyond the confines of the music press and those who devote their lives to finding the best new bands before everyone else does.
Taking their name from The Smiths song, they are in fact, nothing like the pioneering mancunians of yesteryear, but more an embodiment of everything that was so good about punk. This Seattle set have influenced all the success stories of the last few years from Franz Ferdinand to Bloc Party - who can be found mooching around at the back of the venue along with…ahem…Har Mar Superstar. However, with not a pencil tie in sight or the slightest whiff of general art-school stuffiness in the air, PGMG are organic, raw and loud.
Opening track 'The Nocturnal House', starts with a dub-style melodica and Andrea Zollo’s haunting vocals before heading into a crashing crescendo that has their devoted following losing itself in a sea of pogo jumping madness. This proves a common formula as new song 'Pryrite Pedestal' begins with a slow haunting guitar intro before building up into a frenzied attack of crashing cymbals, regimented bass lines and uniform hand-clapping.
The whole set rapidly becomes an exercise in crowd manipulation with Zollo playing the ruthless dictator, slowing things down with the ska-tastic 'Parade' which perfectly demonstrates PGMG’s versatility before shifting back into top gear with old favourites 'Something Bigger, Something Brighter' and 'This Is Our Emergency' which really raise the roof.
Clad in pink t-shirt and black leather biker gloves, Zollo bounds around the stage orchestrating hand-claps with all the attitude of Juliette Lewis, only better looking and with the tunes to back it up.
Finishing with traditional favourite 'Getaway', the spirit of PGMG’s transcendental sound is encapsulated in 4 minutes of mayhem. They might not be breaking any boundaries, but they serve as a timely reminder as to why the original punk scene was so important and what it all stood for in the first place. As their bandwagon gathers momentum in the lead up to the summer months, don’t be surprised is PGMG are the toast of the festival circuit come September.
