Small and intimate venues are always a favourite, the 12 Bar Club in Holloway Road fits that bill nicely, a fun filled night looked to be ahead for the tightly packed in-crowd.
The bedraggled headliners Kindred Shins are a four piece bluesy and grungy, stoner rock band hailing from Hertfordshire. Don’t let that slightly unkempt look fool you, their only EP to date, the 6 track ‘Yes to Rioting Notoriety’ is a brilliant blend of dirty rock and blues, quite possibly, essential listening.
As they swagger on to the stage their faithful following wait patiently for the fun to begin, whilst the unsullied amongst us are totally unaware they’re about to be plunged into a new genre of music, Tramprock.
It kicks off with a filthy, loud, intrusive song called ‘There She Blows’, its penetrating riffs from Dave are a killer and they’ll be stuck in your head for days. Sonny delivers the lyrics with enough raw emotion to convey his feelings to us all. The bass line is perfectly delivered by Bean and Leon provides hard hitting drums which fill the small room, all whilst adding backing vocals which are more akin to a front man. How on earth do you follow that?
Well it seems these tramps have plenty more up their tatty jumper sleeves to offer the cheering room, ‘Hang Me Out to Dry’ is followed up with the epic ‘At A Girl’ before they treat us to a premiere of ‘new song’ which is so new it has no name, it fits in perfectly once they remember how it starts. Then they just keep coming with the hypnotic ‘Sweet and the Strange’ and ‘All in the Wrist’ (the outro of which is outstanding) while Sonny jumps around stage dangerously close to falling off or breaking anything and everything. Nothing damaged, they unleash ‘The Spitter’, as is tradition, Dave and Sonny become conjoined twins whilst thrashing the guitars to a brilliant climax, which was maybe slightly too soon.
The stunning performance has the crowd chanting “one more song” as Kindred Shins looked to get off stage, but they then duly deliver an almost unheard of encore with ‘Bitch Be Cool’.
Catch them at a small venue now, a time will come when they’ll no longer play such places and that time could be very soon.
The grungy rockers jet off to Japan at the start of 2016, playing a demanding 10 gigs in 10 days.
Author: Alan Wells
Photos by Eric Duvet Photography
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