Whales and Dolphins
To many people, Terrorvision, the Bradfordian rock quartet who released numerous hit singles during the 1990s, will forever be ‘oh, er, those who did Tequila’. Well, it’s their loss. Whilst their homage to drinking (and subsequently falling off roofs) made a great single, and became their highest-charting release, there was much more besides; five albums, including the under-acclaimed final release Good To Go, and other joyously unhinged singles such as Perseverance and Oblivion. The band went their separate ways in 2001, the way of bassist Leigh Marklew specifically being into new outfit Malibu Stacey. Singer Tony Wright, following a spell spent dry-stone walling, regrouped with new four-piece Laika Dog. Who, conveniently, decided to play York’s own Fibbers a few days ago.
To avoid the soundcheck of the support acts, I spoke with Tony in what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse attached to the back of the venue. It’s easy to make tenuous comparisons when discussing music, and here, indeed, is one: this setting summarises Tony’s attitude – he seems to care neither for fashion, nor for acting like the arrogant numpties rock stars are famed for being. Content with the minimalist surroundings, he is soon in full flow, talking mainly about what he terms the ‘honesty’ of rock music, and how he was driven to form a new band by the state of Radio 1’s output. In many, this would come across as mere posturing, but there’s no suggestion of that here. It’s hard to imagine many musicians who would, following a career in a band as successful as Terrorvision were, be willing to start all over again. Yet Laika Dog are very much just starting out – they are currently unsigned, and on just their second tour. There’s also the passion with which Tony states his case; citing numerous acts indicative of a music scene plagued by ‘karaoke singers’ and identical garage rock bands, it’s clear that he feels strongly about the plight of more genuine acts. ‘That’s why I’m playing places like this again’ he explains, gesturing to the stacks of chairs and concrete pillars standing around; ‘When I played here with Terrorvision, this was the dressing room.’
Such talk creates a certain expectancy. Not that Laika Dog will achieve the sort of success that Terrorvision did, nor, in keeping with Tony’s suspicion of more commercial acts, that the band will remained unsigned for much longer. What one expects is that there will be no compromises, no fawning to the genres in vogue this week, no bandwagons jumped upon. As Tony himself says, of Terrorvision and his new ensemble, ‘we’ve never been fashionable’. Which, frankly, is a good enough reason to support them in itself. And further good reasons to support the band emerge as the gig unfolds. True to Tony’s word, the band do not fit easily into any of the current fashions; they don’t all wear the same outfit, they don’t play retro-style punk-rock, it’s unlikely that they’ll record a collaboration with Sean Paul, and they certainly haven’t appeared on Fame Academy. What they do do is to play rock music. And they do it very nicely, too. Using Terrorvision, inevitably, as a point of reference, their songs have perhaps less instantly memorable riffs and vocal lines than the Bradford group did, but maintain a sprightliness through lively basslines and some outstanding drumming. Tony’s voice has remained as distinctive as ever, and the band have an intermittently-fulfilled potential for a fuller sound, using one guitar more than their singer’s old group did.
Whilst the crowd refused to stand as far forward as Tony urges them to – in between introducing each song with a lengthy ‘Yooooooo!’ – this was perhaps more the fault of the almost uniformly sober crowd. Had this gig taken place during term time, those bloody students with their loans and their drunkenness would have, no doubt, been drawn into some arrhythmic inebriate ‘dancing’ by at least the final two songs. After a relatively unremarkable start, the set improved throughout its duration. Whilst the audience may not have been moved to moving, it was hard to ignore both the quality of many of the songs, and the fact that this was, as Tony had promised, a band whose sound, although not cutting edge, was not easily defined in terms of the current musical fads.
The three-track CD which the band were self-marketing bears no label name. This is because the band aren’t signed – yet – and, as Tony explains, there are no pretensions about Laika Dog. It is apparent, on listening to the recorded material, however, that there are some rather good tunes. It is true that it does suffer from the lack of a really polished production – but it is also true that the quality of the songwriting still stands out. Opener ‘Daddy, What’s Your Soul?’ initially seems unexceptional, but one soon finds the repeated title lurking in one’s head at inconvenient times. ‘Can’t Get Over’ is a joyful track, carried along on a riff reminiscent of ‘How To Makes Friends…’-era Terrorvision. ‘Away With You’ is less immediate, slower, but nonetheless a solid closing song. Noticeably, the tunes I took away in my head from the gig don’t appear here, perhaps having been written after the mini-album was recorded, suggesting that there’s much more to come from Laika Dog. Whilst an appearance on a Radio 1 playlist may be both unobtainable and undesired, they may yet do a lot to redress the balance between the fake and the honest.
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