BLACK HONEY AT START THE BUS

October 2015

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Now here’s a gig you should have been at- and if you weren’t then you need to ask yourself why: maybe you had a long day? Maybe you just didn’t want to leave the house? Maybe you didn’t even know about it - whatever your reason, just remember that you’ve let the side down, and you’ve only got yourself to blame.

 

Rozelle, this writer’s band of the moment, and Bristol’s electronic indie rock band to watch, opened the Start the Bus gig with a glittering exhibition of guitar and beguiling vocal work, matched beautifully by the swarming rhythms and ballooning synth. They set the bar high, and left the room stirred and exultant, ready for the night’s headliners to seize the stage.

 

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 Ok so, Black Honey ... am I right? If you can find a more simultaneously energetic and offhand group of musicians, then we’d like you to tell us who they are: they got on stage and we were all momentarily propelled into some 70s throwback scene where flared corduroys, turtlenecks, printed patterns and the colour brown, all existed in mellow, undisturbed tranquillity - and you probably wouldn’t have been too surprised to see a younger Joan Jett lurking around backstage somewhere.

 

This however, was the present day and Start the Bus on a breezy October evening. Once you remembered that, you were once again reminded of just how striking and impervious Black Honey are. There’s a touch of garage rock about them, also a hint towards shoegaze, and one might even venture to suggest a trace of metal. Mainly though, they were just really, really good.

Let’s be honest, these guys are obstreperous by both name and nature: they surged in on the back of a husky, unapologetic whisper and went on to storm the stage with apathetic stares and aggressive, voltaic bursts of unadulterated sound.

Black Honey played us in with ‘Spinning Wheel’, a track drenched with nostalgia for a time gone by, and oscillating with desert-bluesy guitar riffs so on-point you’d have thought you heard it first in a Tarantino film. In fact, if you’re in one of those defiant and destructive moods we couldn’t suggest a better band for you to dig your fret-bitten fingernails into right now.

 

By their sixth song, it became apparent that there seemed to be some underlying competition between pedalled guitars and wild, back-combed hair: to see which could have a more alarming aesthetic.  And just as we’d begun thinking that we might’ve fully comprehended the kind of vibe they were going for, Izzy, the lead singer, suddenly began cackling manically and screaming into the microphone.

Certainly, there were times when Izzy’s voice was as characteristically seductive and sultry as Divinyls’ Chrissy Amphlett during her notorious bridge in ‘I Touch Myself’. Yet still, the band maintained their rebellious and destructive core as Black Honey thundered into ‘Mothership’, and if this song were written out as a recipe, it would most likely read something like this:          

Hold me silent

Sway me slowly

Wait for mothership

To control me

Repeat until all hell breaks loose and/or madness descends

 

On and on they went, blaring out tracks including, ‘Glorious’, ‘Madonna’, ‘Bloodlust’ and ‘Sleep Forever’, and even as they came towards the end of their set, despite all the jumping, screaming and head banging, they still looked as indifferent and unaffected as they did when they’d walked on – with that occasional staggered glance around; as if they were constantly surprised to find themselves in a room full of people.

 

Then to top it all off, before they’d even finished the apocalyptic instrumental of their final song, the lead singer had walked straight off the stage - head down and unengaged - through the audience and into the sidelines of the gig, apparently uninterested in the applauding mob, and pretty much ready to go home. Some have suggested that this band isn’t at all bothered for the fame, while others reckon it’s all part of the act- speculation aside however, it seems that regardless of what they want, fame is probably coming Black Honey’s way.

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