The Crimea
Published by Matthias July 10th, 2006 in Reviews, Interviews.
London band The Crimea played Fusion on Thursday night as a warm up to T in the Park. Promoting their excellent album Tragedy Rocks the band have much to be proud of, having been favourites of the late John Peel.
Before the show, singer Davey McManus was fresh from a swim alongside the harbour. “It was pure bravado, with five people watching me there was no turning back�. Meanwhile, drummer Owen Hopkins from Wales had been down the chippie, and was bemused by the American tourists: “we don’t get them in Wales, they’ve never heard of it, so they can’t claim it as their own�.
To the band, tours like these are about creating grassroots bases of support. “We played Inverness last night, and a lot of the people there had seen us the time before, and promised to come again to see us in Forres�, says Owen, while Danny adds “it’s important for us to get these gigs before the festivals, because we get really off on them and it gets better and better.�
The band’s last single, White Russian Galaxy, resulted in a performance on Top of the Pops, but Owen is nonchalant about the show’s demise: “Maybe it’s time to just kill it off now, it’s had a good innings. We were lucky enough to do it once so I’m quite happy for them to put it into retirement�.
Opening the show were Stromness band Dazed, spearheaded by a solid performance by singer Nadine Headley. The young band’s set of covers by the likes of the Chilli Peppers and Franz Ferdinand was tight, and they will have real potential if they can repeat that with material they’ve written themselves.
When the Crimea took the stage, Davey gave his all right from the start, pulling his mic stand through the audience so that he could sing facing the band for the first song. As he sings his whole body seizes with the emotion he is portraying with his voice. Combining passionate, melancholy poetry with up-tempo music, the band have a variety in their sound that keeps the audience intrigued throughout the set. The high-points were swathing epics like Lottery Winners on Acid, White Russian Galaxy, and the band’s next single, Baby Boom.
The Crimea on Myspace
Journalist is alright, band is distinctly averagio i’m afraid. i love hendricks.
i’ve seen better ones i must say
i don’t know, it ooks like just another band …
I dont feel anything special about their music.
Its just one more ordinary band.
i went and I liked the song Lottery Winners on Acid because it had a hawaiian bit in it and i got to do a little hawaiian wave. But wish they weren’t on acid.
Balls, wouldn’t have minded seeing them, but ah well.
Dazed have put on a pretty good performance every time I’ve seen them.
Yeah I thought they were actually pretty good (the crimea I mean). I saw them two days later at T in the park and they were great there two. seriously althought they may take some getting used to they are well worth a listen. There cd tragedy rocks is really impressive. (Thanks Clazz if I knew you were there Id have given u a copy of our demo)
Music sounds like a 1000 other bands to me.
I’m sorry that I missed this, I didn’t hear about it before the show. Does anyone know if they’ll be coming up again?
It was a great gig, but to be honest I wouldn’t expect them to return any time soon. The gig wasn’t brilliantly attended, though a few since then have been encouraging audience-wise.