Tuesday, 23 May 2023

A View From The Back Of The Room: Trevor's Head & Lacertillia (Live Review By Matt Bladen)

Trevor's Head & Lacertillia, The Moon, Cardiff 20.05.23

Psychadelic Rock Strumpets Lacertillia (9) got the evening going crashing head first into their spiritual home of The Moon with funky, psych rocking and stoner riffs, playing a set of classics, the cramped stage always fully taken up by the five piece space machine, Carl now firmly back behind the kit as a he and Ed dig a deep groove for Lucas and Mike to unleash their trade off guitar, Mike's somewhere up in space while Lucas' knuckle drags the caveman distortion. The musical backing gets the whole place nodding and hip shaking to the sounds of Round And Round along with Furthur and select cuts from their catalogue.

Fry is still one of the wildest frontmen around face painted, hands gloved, shirtless and diving into the crowd as much as possible he controls this madness like a crazed conductor, wild eyed and dangerous during the songs, but warm and welcoming between them. Apologising for the early start (8:30) they smashed out their set to a partisan audience hopefully gaining some new fans as Lacertillia shows are a bit of rarity now. Proving that when in The Moon they're near to untouchable.

Tonight's Headliners were London based weirdos Trevor's Head (9) Their angular riffs ready to get The Moon pulling awkward shapes. A noisy punk infused trio with a triumvirate of vocalists, drummer Matt Ainsworth sings on the groovy Grape Fang and ferocious Roll It Over. But they work together in some kind of inharmonious unison for most of the songs. Their style was a bit slower and more methodical than Lacertillia but they managed to incite lots of fervent head banging with their style.

They were also the only band on the bill to have a bass solo, courtesy of Aaron Strachan showing that they come from the more cerebral side of the stoner/psych spectrum they still have a good time with an injection of the humour and sarcasm in all their songs. Drawing the set list from their three albums they managed to win the crowd over as the set wore on, each set of ears getting better aquatinted with the sounds of Trevor's Head, early cut Blood Moon entering Status Quo go doom regions the blues riffs of Roger Atkins nice and fuzzy, his vocals snarling, bravely playing through a broken string for the last two songs.

A two band set of great greebo riffs, perfect for the misfits, potheads and freaks of the Cardiff scene. This style of music always does very well in this city so more of this would be very welcome. Bands/labels/promoters take note Psychonaut Sunshine, Pity My Brain (and Snuff Lane) are doing wonders with this scene. South Wales and South West and tonight was the perfect example of that.

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