Night three of Independent Venue Week at the Hallamshire Hotel saw three artists from across the length of the country coming together for an exciting bill of performances. Glasgow’s Humour, East Kent’s TARMAC and Sheffield’s own Sundress had us poised for an encouragingly eclectic evening of live performance.
First up was Sundress, established here in the heart of the city when they met at university. The group are young and new to the scene but demonstrating a lot of promise, and a great musical and performative intelligence. Their synth-pop / alternative rock sensibilities bleed through with great clarity, and with their main stage appearance looming at this years Tramlines, their ascension is definitely one to keep an eye on.
Next up, TARMAC – post-punk noise rock outfit. Their vicious, jagged guitars sear through the space, gripping its audience by the shirt with a passion that’s unapologetic yet warm. This three-piece encapsulate ferocity in their song-writing and performance. Tracks like ‘Daze’ wax lyrical about the permeating dullness of everyday life without progressing or evolving, whilst ‘Physical Medium’ draws on lusting after an old flame with tongue-in-cheek wordplay. There is a huge amount of technical prowess on display. Highly distorted but finely tuned vocals scrape with satisfaction across heavy riffs, all underscored with truly remarkable drumming that captures admiration.
They have a great camaraderie with the audience too. They’re purposed and playful. They’re aggressive and filled with grunge and fuzz, but this is anchored by an attention to detail in the songwriting and lyricism that is arresting. Our focus is ragged to the sharp wrenching of a life once lived, and the prickling dissatisfaction of feeling like you’re going nowhere. They screech for escapism, they screech about the various ways it fails them, and they screech about the Sisyphean plight to attain this. Yet their soul keeps it all alive – their soul makes the screeching music – and their energy puts blood in the veins. There is a twinge of nihilism, but not a sliver of surrender. It’s captivating to be a part of.
As the audience catches their breath, we await the headline act. Humour are both erratic and cohesive, sprawling and focused. They create pockets for themselves to occupy their own madness only to seamlessly fall in line like soldiers, slickly snapping back to beat for soaring melodic choruses. Crucially they are equally committed to exploring the absurd impositions of ego and want – and the unavoidable, vulnerable sincerity that the two bring. The result is something oddly profound. Not declared, but simply present. And if you weren’t sure about this, they tell you themselves on ‘Pure Misery’ (‘I gotta tell you something! I really gotta tell you something!!…*frantic gibberish, manically oscillating in pitch*’).
Their live presence is excellent. A sprawling apparatus of motifs, it’s akin to Andreas Christodoulidis’ striking cover work for the hardcore outfit. There are hulking presences, frenetic energies, routine intensity, occupied gazes and compelling stillness amidst the monolithic noise. The audience are here, just as involved in this feverish iconography. Necks pull heads. Toes pull feet and feet pull legs. Sound pulls voices.
Humour prove why they are one of the most exciting alternative bands on the circuit, who’s growing success shows no signs of stagnating. Christodoulidis’ demonstrates verse to verse his dynamic vocal capabilities. There is an exciting originality in the lyricism and delivery, partnered with bold vocal backdrops in which all the band lend themselves to the poetic mania before us. Ross Patrizio and Jack Lyall serve tone-soaked guitar drones that tame the chaos into consonant, full-blooded fixtures. Drummer Ruaridh Smith refuses to be diminished to merely heartbeat and operates more like the music’s nervous system – their work is equally as responsive as it is causal, autonomic yet extremely deliberate. Lewis Droigs grinding bass weaves and veers frictionlessly within the textured soundscape, a mimicry of the wild tonal shifts that avoids being derivative.
And there lies a common theme with Humour. Almost oxymoronic. There is a wry, satirical sensibility at the heart of many of their narratives but this is always upheld by a weighty and considered sincerity. They echo the harsher sounds of hardcore American outfits that wield memories of 2000’s skateboarding culture, yet possess an originality that renders you silent when someone asks ‘who/what are they like?’. Their structural prowess is very much the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, yet simultaneously, the sum of the parts are rich and roaring to be heard, irrespective of their mechanical function. Songs like ‘A Small Crowd Gathered to Watch Me’ and ‘Jeans’ paint the band as innovative and non-conformist, yet ‘yeah, mud!’ and ‘Big Money’ show they can stay true to their creative principles whilst also demonstrating they know how to deliver well-balanced anthems that are refined to be usefully penetrable to unfamiliar ears.
2025 promises exciting things for these bands. Humour have just embarked on their first tour of the year. They are seeking to improve on 2024’s international gig tally, and one can hope off the back of two raucous EP’s, it won’t be long before the Glaswegian avant-garde rockers give us a debut record to since our teeth into.
