Dutch Uncles at the Fleece in Bristol gig review
Posted on: 2015-12-16
Our rating:
Alternative indie pop band Dutch Uncles show that they?re more polished than ever with album number four?
Having spent most of 2015 touring their fourth studio album O Shudder, Marple-based Dutch Uncles finally brought their brilliantly eccentric sound to Bristol’s Fleece.
Boasting a slightly refreshed line-up that has seen them expand to become a six-piece, the change has given them a heftier live sound, albeit with the same carefully constructed balance that ensures frontman Duncan Wallis’s distinctive falsetto remains up front and centre.
Their set was a solid mix of old and new. Opening with Babymaking, the first track of the new album, they went on to include many of their singles including Face In – their first release back in 2008 – Fester, Cadenza and Nometo.
Tracks from the latest album were given an airing, introduced by Wallis as ‘new’ although many in the crowd would have grown familiar with them since O Shudder’s release in February 2015. They included Decided Knowledge, Upsilon, Drips, Accelerate, and I Should Have Read, although disappointingly there was no space on the set list for arguably two of the album’s stronger tracks In n Out and Be Right Back.
They ended with crowd favourite Flexxin’, from their 2013 album Out of Touch in the Wild, and still possibly their finest track to date.
Dutch Uncles – along with label mates Outfit – remain one of the great secrets of this genre, yet to hit the higher profile of bands such as Everything Everything despite having at least equal levels of technical brilliance to their material. Live performance is all with a band like this though and, despite some technical issues with his microphone stand that forced a song to be re-started, Wallis is totally watchable, with his signature dance moves unleashed between almost every line of the lyrics, difficult though it must have been within the relatively tight confines of the Fleece stage.
The band’s fondness for the atypical rhythm perhaps makes them a little inaccessible to some music fans. However, the complexity of their songs – and the slick way they execute them live – means they are well worth making the effort to get to know since there is also a real warmth to this particular brand of quirk.
Rating: 4/5
Reviewed by Martin Allen for 365Bristol at The Fleece in Bristol
For more about Dutch Uncles please visit www.dutchuncles.co.uk.
Article by:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Swansea, Jimmy moved to Bristol back in 2004 to attend university. Passionate about live music, sport, science and nature, he can usually be found walking his cocker spaniel Baxter at any number of green spots around the city. Call James on 078 9999 3534 or email Editor@365Bristol.com.
