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With a reputation which can be broken down into a cross between Dirty Sanchez and the White Stripes, together with a singer whose schizo-twitching-fuck-off brilliance leaves Craig Nicholls looking like Avril Lavigne; it’s not hard to see why the world will soon be singing to My Red Cell’s mischievous tune. The Welsh miscreants take a tired predetermined cliché, and turn it into a convulsing glimpse into the darker corners of the parts of our psyche that we’d rather not admit.
Pity then that the world would rather go and see Jet, apparent arbiters of modern rock ‘n’ roll, than something new. Vocalist Russell Toomey takes up the microphone like an exorcist drawing out a demon, with disjointed kicks, windmill swings and fits with the soul scraping veracity of the bands opener ‘Tell Me Nice’.
Blowing the current trend of ‘looking like the music you’re into’ out of the water, the band play the crowd like they do the media, mixing up song titles, and serving up falsehoods like they’re a good honest meal. “Gullible is beauty,” asserts Toomey, in a broad Welsh accent, after telling the crowd that the band come from Northampton. The screaming majesty of ‘She’s Leaving’ fuses the intricacies of the Liars with the ungodly rawk of the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. “You better shut that door tight/ or your parents’ll see I’m a hermaphrodite,” shrieks Toomey like it’s his epitaph.
Height of the set comes from a b-side from the bands first single, in the shape of ‘Dedication’. “Fuck love and hate / lets masturbate to rock n roll,” sleazes Toomey, with a smirking baseness that almost sees the audience leave promptly to do just that. Bolshy, intense, and fundamentally astute…you can leave it to My Red Cell to find the words when you don’t have any.
Photos by Sakura Henderson
