Muncie Girls, Cuban Embassy, Birmingham - review
We’d been here once before, on a musky Sunday evening in late April. We thought, with it being nearly October, the temperature might be a little less face melting. Nah. It wasn’t.
Luckily, the music matched the heat last night as indie trio Muncie Girls came to Birmingham's Cuban Embassy.
Muncie Girls released their sophomore album last month and this was part of a tour to ‘congratulate themselves on doing that’ joked frontwoman Lande Hekt.
They had brought friends. Aussies The Hard Aches had a huge lick of grunge to spew all over the stage. A twosome, the guitar and drums combined to shake brain cells with ferocity and volume.
Opener Mess was a sweet introduction to what these guys were about. Screeched vocals mixed with jilted guitars create a nice wall of sound. Like our very own Royal Blood they make a lot of noise for two blokes.
Likeable between songs, angsty during – these guys had a sound worth hearing.
Read more: Muncie Girls, Fixed ideals - album review
The switch around was quick, and Hekt and the gang were poised and ready to impress.
Unfortunately for Hekt, her mic let her down all evening. She was simply drowned out by the ferocious music. And while at first they tried to combat this the sound guys just seemed to give up after a few tracks.
It didn’t ruin the set at all, Muncie Girls are worth listening to musically. It’s just if somebody there had shown up purely for Hekt’s painfully personal tales weaved into their songs they may have been left feeling short-changed.
High and In Between Bands came early in the set from the new record Fixed Ideals. The former is a fairly breezy and light number. It features slamming guitars that don’t overbear. They sounded great tonight. And the latter is one of those personal tracks about a lost former gigging venue being missed. The drums here slink nicely from section to section, Luke Ellis sounded on point all evening – the show’s highlight for sure.
They followed this up with Jeremy, another personal journey as a two fingers to a terrible father from Hekt. Anybody, like this writer, who is a fully fledged member of the Terrible Dads Club will resonate with this. That softened guitar to introduce it is even more sad when live.
Bubble Bath was accompanied by a flurry of bubbles onto the stage, while Isn’t Life Funny and Picture of Health sounded solid and grouchy.
They closed for us with the frenetic Gone With The Wind, its thumping percussion and dancing guitars pounding our eardrums back out into the late evening warmth with a pleasing ring to remember them by.
