Post by neilcrud on Aug 1, 2010 15:01:51 GMT
SONA
The Base, Bangor
30.07.2010
The Base, Bangor
30.07.2010
(review n pix by neil crud)
Having rain checked the Rock'n'Blues Festival and decided against a Friday night torrential soaking, the option was to soak a banana and sausage roll in Bangor instead. Only not with rain, but with JD, neat and no ice. It wasn't very clever to go out on such a paltry amount of food and certainly not grown up to wash it down with a half bottle of liquid gold, but very important to kick start the weekend.
Kick starting their debut album, it turns out that perennial guitar string breakers Sona are really good with cages and chose their adopted city to launch the said LP. The Base is basically Venue 3456832 (or whatever it was called) under a new name (and probably new owners), and they have earmarked Friday nights as band night (I think We Are Animal played here last week).
With bands enjoying a rich vein of venues at the moment, they can pick and choose where and when to play, with promoters forever asking for bands to fill a last minute slot anywhere across the coast. May the days when you'd have to pretend to be a blues band just to get a gig be banished to the archive pages of link2wales.co.uk. For now it has turned full circle, 'please play at our venue' - and the more punk you are the better. It brings the kids out to play, or at least it is allegedly meant to. The problem being, there's too many to choose from. We're spoilt for choice! Too many bands, and venues and not enough punters, or least that's what it feels like at times! Look! I'm whining again..!!!
Steve Rastin (Rhyl's promoter extraordinaire) will tell you that all the faces who used to go to band nights are now wrapped up in Dirty Bass Nights, maybe going off to Uni to study recreative chemicals has a lasting effect...
Regardless of this, we had a good night in Bangor, only one band playing due to Seagull Kinevil pulling out after Marcus found Elvis Presley alive and locked in a cupboard in Amlwch. So a late start meant plenty of time to pursue my dipsomanic hobby and dilute that said consumed JD with Carling. This of course leads to silliness, from a betrothal to Rob Gintis to introducing Sona on stage as 'cunts.' Ah well...
Despite their rude introduction, they got on with the task in hand and put in a hard work out during their sweaty shift. Having cloned himself two or three times to play in as many bands at once, Kyle has been a Sona bassist for over a year now, and his input has left a mark on their music - fusing Sona with a Jives Room slant, which isn't a bad thing at all, stick some solid drumming to go with Jamie's cheese grater voice and trebled up guitar sound, and you have a tight package delivered to your aural receptors.
The excellent Gone But Not Forgotten opens their album in a style that suggests this band don't cultivate gardens that they then smoke, nope, there's no dope here, it's charged and energised and zips along, stops, twists, jumps, lies down, then charges again, as does the zesty When Skies Are Grey. The pretty old track White Lies has been Kyled and has the fitting lyric about being in the summer rain, and the equally excellent Universally Challenged typifies Sona by slamming in with pace, dropping down for a breather, gathering momentum, a time change and bang 'You want everything, I want EVERYTHING..!!!'
We all want everything, it's a pity we can't - but you can have Sona's new album 'Really Good With Cages' by clicking this link www.sonamusic.co.uk/traksnvids.html
Don't stand So Close to me...