A View From The Back Of The Room: Clutch

Clutch, The Picturebooks & The Inspector Cluzo, O2 Academy Bristol

I suppose I should count myself lucky, due to the influx of acts playing Cardiff this year we haven’t had to go across the bridge that much at all, more importantly we haven’t had many gigs at all in the god awful O2 Academy Bristol, it’s quite possibly the worst venue I’ve ever been in, the sound is nearly always muddy and they do have a habit of over selling the venue meaning that all three levels become almost impassable. This often leads to either mild dehydration or a very painful bladder as you dare not move away from your space to use the facilities or go to the bar. It also means that if you are on the floor, you will be in a pit whether you want to or not. A truly dreadful place to watch any sort of music but unfortunately the lessons will not be learnt to make it just that little more tolerable.

The misgivings of the venue out of the way, I arrived just after the doors opened and with the middle part of the upper barrier already full I was at the right hand side of the stairs at the top due to my inability to face standing on the floor because of major back and knee issues. Being up the top (and my height) does offer a pretty good view however the sound does suffer a little from this vantage point, however you could only really make this out when the headliners were on stage. The supports both being two pieces, are very hard to get wrong with drums and guitar easy to engineer for the live stage. First on the stage were French duo The Inspector Cluzo (7), named for the infamous detective in The Pink Panther Series, they label themselves as a band from Gascony which they say is not France but to a room full of Brits they may as well have been from Paris.

Geographical quibbles aside they’re self labelled brand of funk-infused rock was just what the wet Tuesday night crowd needed to wake themselves up the well dressed Phil Jourdain handling drums and backing vocals while the more wild and reckless Malcom Lacrouts handled lead guitar and lead vocals, shamelessly anti-bass player and overly D.I.Y the band play a raucous style of music that incorporates big riffs, funk phrasing and even some jazz breaks with the vocals wildly veering from mid-range croons to wild falsetto, which I think should have been left alone, early on there was an air of disinterest but as the set wore on and the 2-pint glasses were consumed (yet another issue with the venue) the steadily more inebriated crowd got involved right as the climatic dismantling of the drumkit concluded the last song. For a first time playing in Bristol The Inspector Cluzo had that little bit of chaos from their namesake that was an ideal beginning to the evening.

Next up was less chaotic but a heck of a lot more enthralling as the second of tonight’s supports came on the stage. Playing what I like to call atmospheric heavy blues The Picturebooks (8) are a primal force, again they are drum and guitar unit but unlike the traditional set up the drum kit here looks almost like a percussion set up there are no small toms just big floor toms and snares, few cymbals and the occasional shaker and bell. From the way they strode on to the stage and their entire sound I honestly thought the band were American but no they are in fact German, however they do look like they have ridden their hogs right off the set of Easy Rider.

Frontman Fynn in all black riffing away on his electro-acoustic like a man possessed by Robert Johnson, manipulating sound with both pedals and feedback, on top of the kit Phillipp aggressively beat the holy hell out of them with primal urgency. He was so vicious that at one point Fynn had to check he was ok. In between the visceral heavy blues Fynn explained that they are very much a D.I.Y band as it’s the two of them plus Fynn’s dad on sound, a cracking sound he gave too as every note reverberated around the room. A slightly different affair from both the previous act and the headliner The Picturebooks managed to ramp up the heavy bulldozing their way through the set getting everyone nice and fired up for what was to come.

What was to come was possibly one of the best live acts around the unstoppable force of Pure Rock Fury that is Clutch (9), each coming to the stage individually as soon as Neil Fallon approached his Tim hit the riff for D.C Sound Attack and we were off and running. Now D.C Sound Attack is a groovy little number with a double cowbell jam in the middle so this for a band known for their intensity was a little too laid back but, it grooved along into The House That Peterbuilt from the eponymous debut record and Spirit Of 76 from the latest album. It was here that the crowd started to really go nuts even the slower songs were getting quite vicious pits as two from Pure Rock Fury came in succession, it was the faster chugs of Sucker For The Witch, Gimme The Keys and the mental Firebirds that really caused alarm for the security stationed in front of the stage.

As the songs wore on (all 17 of them) you are drawn towards Neil more and more. Tim and Dan stand statuesque with Tim only venturing out for solos, but both are quite content to just let the riffs flow, while drummer Jean-Paul happily tub thumps in the backroom, Fallon on the other hand is wild and incensed only settling down when he’s playing the guitar. Emily Dickinson and Hot Bottom Feeder (their most controversial song apparently) were met like old friends but the tempo shift was notable with a steamrolling trifecta of In Walks Barbarella, Electric Worry and The Mob Goes Wild meant that the encore of two slower paced new songs did make the room come-down a little.

Clutch are always brilliant but unfortunately I have seen a lot of reports of people simply not enjoying them due to the excess numbers in the crowd, even from my vantage point on the balcony I could see the conditions on the floor were worse than those offered to a Sardine with some pretty sloppy pit work. A sold out crowd is fine but an oversold one is detrimental to the venue and to the band even one with the fandom of Clutch who as I said were on fire tonight.