Forever Cult
The Stillery, London
April 9 2015
Words: Richard O'Hagan
Photos: Caroline Garden
There are two sad facts about the modern music business. The first is that getting a record deal is hard. The second is that even getting such a deal – even one from the excellent Clue Records – doesn’t stop you from having to play the toilet circuit. And they don’t come much more ‘toilet’ than The Stillery, where the four unisex cubicles (one conspicuously lacking a light, fact fans) are adjacent to the stage, giving any band the disturbing sight of their audience apparently leaving whenever nature calls. Add that to the painfully inadequate nature of the stage itself, the apron of which is actually constructed from coffee tables, and it is no surprise that Forever Cult seem a little lacklustre tonight.
The three-piece certainly try to make light of the setting. Alex Greaves might have worse dress sense than roadkill, but the energy with which the bass player prowls his third of the stage can’t be faulted. Even more compelling is drummer Aaron Snowden, who rocks a look somewhere between Hair Bear and a member of Napalm Death, yet displays a surprisingly deft touch behind the kit – even if he does have the most brilliantly pained expression whenever called on to play quietly. Notwithstanding that though, the band just can’t seem to lift a largely partisan crowd from a state of polite lethargy.
That isn’t what is going to hold this band back, however. What is going to hold them back is a lack of decent tunes. Tonight they play seven numbers, five of which should’ve been strangled at birth. ‘Luck’ actually sounds less like a song than a jam which goes horribly wrong, whilst ‘Figure It Out’ is the sound of a group who haven’t worked out that a song should actually go somewhere, rather than just wander around in a vaguely dyspeptic haze for four minutes.
The absolute travesty – and tragedy – of this is that when Forever Cult do get it right, they are absolutely bloody brilliant. Singer Kieran Clarke might be taking his Kurt Cobain fixation a little far with the same cardigan-and-band-tee combo (tonight, Sonic Youth) as his idol, but ‘Winter’s Glow’ is as fine a piece of grunge as you will have heard in two decades, whilst ‘Yasmin’, thrown away criminally early in the set, is a number most bands would be glad to call their own.
It is rare to see a band with such a disparity between the wonderful and the godawful at this stage of their careers, but Forever Cult clearly have the ability to go on to bigger and better things. The question is whether they can harness it.
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