...Despite it only being midway through the ‘all-dayer’ at Hamptons, and just before dinnertime, it was surprisingly busy. The atmosphere is relaxed, with people seated at tables or milling around the bar area, listening to the last song of a group of children that quite frankly must have slipped through the net at the try outs. Hamptons is a small venue with a capacity of less than 50 people but it’s this intimacy that gives much of the venue’s charm, complimented with ivy and tomato plants, lulling the audience into the illusion that they could be in a local tapas bar on the Costa del Sol. The event has been set up by Jimmie Chills, Hamptons’ friendly events organiser who, whilst running the sound and lights on the night still had time to add insightful pieces of information about some of the artists as the night went on. Its small clubs like this that are the first rung on the ladder for many bands and it’s the friendly staff and organisers of these gigs who are genuinely interested in the acts they promote that are key to the success of many bands we know today.
The next act steps onto the stage with the familiar re-tuning of guitar and adjusting of the mic stand we’ve seen multiple times today, introduces himself as Andy Hawkswell and begins his set. The first song is a rather downbeat love song leaving the listener feeling rather melancholy and the little rush of curiosity that accompanied Andy’s arrival on the stage was replaced once again with the polite disinterest of before. The next song however perked up the ears of even those in the deepest of discussions, with its animated intro and the guttural tones of the first verse contrasting greatly to the soft song of before. From this song on we see a mix of different tempo songs from Andy and to make up for the variety in style it seems he decided to focus five of his six songs on “this girl [he] thinks is fit” but this detracted nothing from the quality of his song writing, with each song personifying a different aspect or experience he has had with this girl. Sprinkled in-between the songs are brief pauses for a bit of interaction with the crowd, with his accessible humour Andy proves to be an all round entertainer rather than just a singer-songwriter. When he plays his final song named “Baby Elephants” he gets the largest applause of the day and leaves the crowd with a few witty comments to ponder and can himself exit the stage with the satisfaction of knowing that he truly set the bar high for the remaining acts…
...After such an exceptional performance from Andy, on stumbled two students from Solent University, dressed in mismatched clothing in an attempt, I believe, to be artistic. Katie was wearing leggings with a colour-clashing top straight from the wardrobe of DJ Jazzy Jeff, and Tom was wearing three-quarter length jogging bottoms with a smart shirt and tie; presumably wanting to appeal to both the sophisticated music fan, and to the students by remaining true to his roots. An unexceptional looking act to say the least; but like all the acts before them, they were given the respect of the audience who eagerly await the next performance. Seated at the back of the audience the drop of the audiences shoulders was clear when the set opened with the words: “We’re going to start with a cover of a song you all love.” As this song was a song we all loved you’ll be surprised to find that it was a good minute before I realized that the track was in fact meant to be “Use Somebody” by the Kings of Leon but it was definitely pushing it. What topped off their opening track was the over the head acoustic guitar solo, which unsurprisingly lead to several smirks in the audience and in my case I actually felt goose pimples of embarrassment just being there. Whilst I feel sorry for the couple I believe its necessary to carry on describing their performance accurately.
When it came to a song they felt they could harmonize in, they couldn’t. Katie, to her credit, sings with power in her voice that does predominantly come from shouting rather than projecting her lyrics, but this is easily fixed with a few singing lessons and a bit more practice. With a style comparable to Juliette Lewis, Katie did produce some interesting covers of some classic tracks and with a bit more work I believe she could do well. Tom, on the other hand, despite knowing the songs he was singing, struggled to keep a tune as he was singing in a style that I can only describe as choral, which really didn’t fit the songs at all. To round of their selection of rock anthem killer covers they decided to play The ‘Middle’ a song that I hold up in my top five favorite songs of all time, so I was a little on edge not wanting to hear them ruin it but living up to the rest of their set they well and truly destroyed it. And that was that, with a small mention of their new EP coming out they were gone, supported by a polite round of applause. For those interested, the album is out, quite ironically, on the 1st of April and they have a string of promotional gigs at that time…
…This band shall be named ‘Unknown’ as rather unprofessionally they failed to introduce themselves, but putting this aside they were a very intriguing act and if you can track them down I would recommend going to watch them. Walking onto the stage they were a much more striking collective as they all left the house wearing clothes that were acceptable in public. The lead singer, and overall spokesperson for the group took to the mic and with the words “not gonna lie… we haven’t practiced any originals because we’re too lazy” they broke into a cover of ‘Purple Haze’ by JImi Hendrix. So yet another cover band to hit the stage but in this case it was a breath of fresh air as they genuinely did the originals justice. They performed a varied mix of songs ranging from ‘love isn’t a competition’ by the Kaiser Chiefs to ‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley, but it was the acoustic cover of ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast that impressed me the most as it was such a far cry from the original that it just worked so well. Lisa the front woman was confident, bubbly and engaging and didn’t mind making fun out of her own over-enthusiasm the ‘lead’ guitarist had evidently been playing for years and was very quiet but very secure in the fact that his talent was not being lost on the audience. The second guitarist’s purpose however, I’m not entirely sure of, as for the majority of the set he was watching the other two, or strumming along to a basic version of the lead guitar work. Towards the end of the performance we find out that he is in fact the singer’s boyfriend, which goes some way towards explaining his appearance on set, maybe there was nothing worth watching on television. This band actually had time for an encore, which I think secretly they planned for, as after a moment of mock surprise and modest appreciation they started playing ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ by Wheatus. This was were Lisa’s true skills as a performer were exposed as she managed to get more than half of the audience to start singing along, and even some of them stood up, although I’m half convinced these were her carefully placed friends. All in all a very successful set, that these three (although largely the singer and lead guitarist) young artists should be very proud of…
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