Bad Sounds @ Bungalows and Bears // Live Review

The Bath five piece bring their rousing live show to the Steel City for a night of funk, groove and baggy dancing.

All bona fide stars come in twosomes: Carl and Pete, Meg and Jack, Noel and Liam et al. play off of each other in a way that, solo, they can’t. But where that crowd are fairly bread-and-butter, Bad Sounds inflect a younger and more buoyant sound to cement their increasingly popular status, with brothers Ewan and Callum Merrett steering the ship.

Support comes from up-and-coming rapper D.A., who implores the girls in the audience to add him on social media, promising to follow ‘the hot ones’ back: so far, so hip-hop. Where D.A.’s machismo separates him from most hip-hop wannabes is his deep understanding of timing and lyricism – straight out the gate with new track ‘Over’ he marks the stage as his territory, spewing out lyrics over trap beats, indicating a new direction, but it’s mixed with soaring violins and is more considered and melancholy than others in the genre.

‘No More Mind’ has Spanish-influenced off-kilter guitars and a sleepy sax solo resting underneath his confident flow as he throws shade at rap’s inherent obsession with fame and money and his own struggles to leave the house in comparison.

Very few British rappers have crossover appeal; despite grime’s growing popularity, it’s a decidedly British affair. D.A. by comparison fuses the mellow beats and samples of American groups like A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul – tracks are built from the sound up as opposed to beef-starting bars and confrontational YouTube send-ups.

Then come headliners Bad Sounds. Hip-hop inspired indie pop may sound like an unlikely combo but the band wear their influences on their sleeves with such unabashed joy its impossible to dislike. Fan favourite ‘Banger’ says it on the tin – a groovy bassline and Prince-like falsettos, with keyboardist Ewan hunched over his instrument looking like a dime store Andy Warhol. By contrast, brother Callum looks more Kurupt FM than 70s AM radio. Flanked by George Harrison lookalikes in the form of Charlie Pitt on bass and Sam Hunt on guitar and drummer Olivia Dimery, their myriad styles reflect the eclectic mix of inspirations.

The band have said that they hope to go as mainstream as possible and they’re refreshingly earnest in their attempts to produce melodic pop songs above anything else. Recent single ‘Meat on the Bones’ is a nod to this with Callum’s lazy drawl and the funk chords, tinged in layers of psychedelia, proving to be even more infectious live than on record.

The band mask some pretty grisly lyrics under buoyant sounds; in ‘Meat’ they chronicle a friend’s dead dog tattoo; in ‘Avalanche’ the lyrics turn the morbid into the conversational – ‘a man who died wearing an anorak/ didn’t know him well but when we were twelve/ she lent him 20p and never got her money back’.

These offhand tidbits pepper most of their songs but with the triumphant trumpets of songs like ‘Wages’ – an homage to Sly and the Family Stone – the mundane or dark has never sounded so great.

Their music has been compared to the ‘baggy’ sounds of Beck or Madchester ravers Primal Scream, but where they were aloof, Bad Sounds are direct and upbeat. A hotchpotch of funk, pop, hip-hop, psych and indie shouldn’t work but it does.