Live Review :: Just Mustard / Talk Show / Careerist :: The Prince Albert, Brighton - Oct 16 2019

Live Review

Just Mustard / Talk Show / Careerist

The Prince Albert, Brighton

October 16 2019

Words/Pictures: Steve Willcox

On a wet and windy night the Irish are back in town. Dundalk's Just Mustard, bring along Belfast rockers Careerist to sgare the craic, with London lads Talk Show making up what looks like a triple whammy of a line-up.

With an impressive turn out for first support, Careerist take to the stage. Previously known as Hot Cops, this trio knows the score. Vocalist Carl Eccles launches the night with ‘Doors’, a song that sounds not to dissimilar to Beck with melodic slacker rock guitars driving the tunes along in the background. New single ‘Slasher’ - from their forthcoming album 'Weird Hill' - gets the crowd moving and it’s nice to hear ‘Book II’ get an airing before its release as their next single. An old Hot Cops track ‘Decay’ is brought out to close an engaging set.

With the room filling up with revellers that are looking to party, South East London new wave punks Talk Show get on the stage and launch immediately into ‘Glue’ with Tom Holmes' guitar crunching riffs, inter-spliced with vocalist Harrison Swann’s gritty spoken-word lyrics. ‘Fast and Loud’ brings out the dancing feet of this room with the mad infectious beats of drummer Chloë Stacey Macgregor; this cracker of a debut single - "a bleak commentary about cities" - having caught attention on its release back in March.



‘Fear’, the B-side to the aforementioned, brings the frontman out onto the floor for some alfresco guitar playing amongst the crowd, and later on during ‘Atomica’ he serenades the busy room with his energetic and engaging vocal style. ‘Stress’ has a great melody driving this song along and bassist George Sullivan delicately plucking those chords to a thumping rhythm. Little Indie favourite, the spaghetti western-meets-post-pink styled ‘Ankle Deep (In A Warm Glass Of Water)', proves to be a fitting end to their set with a room getting totally behind the frenetic guitar flailing and Harrison's urgently spat-out delivery. With a headline London Halloween show in Peckham soon, these guys are worth seeing again and I’m seriously thinking of going.

By the time Just Mustard take to the stage, the room is heaving. As the lights turn deep red, this five-piece, adept at creating a heady mix of atmospheric shoegaze/noise-rock tinged with dream-pop beats (as evidenced on their critically acclaimed debut album, 'Wednesday') start off with the shimmering ‘Tainted’. Katie Ball’s ghosting vocals float through the air with a methodic beat alongside the wailing guitars of David Noonan, that creates both intensity and lightness. Latest single ‘Seven’ enthrals with its sinister sounding guitar noises and the accompanied trip-hop beats of Shane Maguire, that gets the floor moving. They have brought in a large contingent of fans, with one having come over from Paris specially to see them.

Earlier single ‘Frank’, with its stop-start rhythm and the pulsating edgy guitars of Mete Kaylon, is riveting; honing a dark shoegaze essence, punctuated by Katie’s equally dark and brooding vocal control that reverberates around the room. During ‘Pigs’, Rob Clarke’s bass-line thunders along with skin-crawling guitars and Katie’s ethereal vocals. Last song tonight ‘October’, the companion piece of 'Frank', released as a double A side single back in the spring, builds on a compelling dark-wave hook with distorted guitars from Mete. This seems to be their prog-rock number and closes the night on a high as loud as the guitars. No wonder The Cure’s Robert Smith loves them.