Echo Lake / City Screen Basement

Echo Lake are one of those bands that sound like they should be good, look like they should be great and in my opinion they actually are! In fact Id say they sound like a first class pop band... Amazing!

It was with the most turgid of pleasures that I got the chance to pop down to my local City Screen Basement (York) to catch them. After listening to their album for the whole day on a Friday it was the perfect remedy to a heavy week.

Neusclaufen were the first of two local celebrity acts carrying the torch, I have seen them a fair bit and as is the nature of the beast that is John Tuffen I don’t think I have ever seen the same set twice. Think experimental noise based round repeats in a Kraftwerk frame of mind with a fresh twist of (currently) Lou Reed and you are in their zone.

Honeytone Cody were the main support for the evening, one of York’s longer running acts and fundamentals of the local music scene played a blistering set, heavily based around driving tribal rhythms and blissfull gothnic shrieks theirs is a big sound.

Echo Lake however are the band I really came to see and were as to be expected the rulers of the evening roost. Huge crashing guitars taking the best from 80’s post punk pop music and tying it in ribbons around Linda Jarvis’ beautiful voice. The band performance wasn’t exactly awe inspiring, however it was the music that shone through. The guitarist working overtime switching between loop stations, keyboards and guitar like a Vishnu surrounded by instruments and a sixth sense for fiddling with knobs he really stole the show from Jarvis. That being said their songs were blissfully played and there were points where everything came together nicely and they shared real moments together. It would have been nice to see more of them though. The last couple of songs in the set were by far their strongest of the night, played powerfully yet effortlessly the band really finished strong.

All in all it was a pretty decent session of live music with Echo Lake providing the dreamy blueprints for a perfectly rounded evening. I would advise everyone reading this to look up each of these great bands.