Review: The Mithered EP Launch Show – Spanky Van Dyke’s – 29 May 2015

Spanky Van Dykes is pretty busy tonight in anticipation of Nottingham indie group The Mithered’s Council EP release.

The band have crept up from pretty much nowhere after playing every shed/dump in the area, experimenting with female backing vocalists and different approaches before reaching the point they are at now, which seems to be them being one of the most respected new groups in the area.

“Check these out if you want something different” said The Maze venue’s Gaz Peacham to me… So I did.

After a standard lineup of indie support in a busy Spanky’s, towering frontman Jacob Staton and his crew amble onto the stage and hit us straight away with The Warhols style woozy punk of ‘Heading Back Again’ and the night finally kicks into action, followed by one of the tracks from the new release, ‘Moody Gras’. This has a sense of fun whilst also summing up the modern generation who spend the majority of their time dribbling over alternative models on Instagram, whilst pondering what the hell they’re doing on this planet.

There’s a bleak brilliance at work here, After the walking-through-the-rain-late-at night feel of ‘I’m Not Going Anywhere’, also from Council, The Mithered’s delighted audience give officially the laziest chant of a band name I’ve ever heard, and it kind of sums their drowsy charm up. Even the technical slip-ups add to their appeal, like when drummer Aaron Wilkinson struggles at time to keep up with the excellence of lead guitarist Adam Gallagher. But when the band are together (and even when they’re not, it doesn’t matter much to their sound or me) it works a storm, such as on the ‘Stones at the honky tonk disco’ of ‘When Your Eyes Are Shut’:

“Don’t try to tell me that you don’t give a f**k,” chucks away Staton, who’s equally potent alone on stage with his acoustic guitar, showing personality with ‘Not At Your Behalf’ in a jaunty Liam Gallagher style vocal. He then slows it down with the sea breeze acoustic lightness of ‘Crown’, before the drums kick in:

“Nothing I did was good enough for you… So I’ll stop trying…”

The group hurtle towards the end with ‘Lies’, which would be a hit if Damon Albarn had’ve got his mitts on it with it’s catchy refrain of “Ooo Why don’t you tell me how it feels?”. The song makes the Velvet Underground sound like Mozart, and that’s not a knock because the Velvets are far better, unless Amadeus had a few nights on the speed and came up with some good stuff I wasn’t aware of.

Bassist Casey Fitch is on point and aggressive throughout the set, and especially here.

The encore shows how much of a Marmite band The Mithered are. Personally I love the stuff. On my toast, in a cup, on my sunday dinner, on my Rice Crispies….. you get the hint, and it means that I really dig The Mithered. ‘Beside Me’ is a shambolic anthem for the apathetic naughties or whatever we call this bloody generation (?), and Gallagher’s riffs are moving and intricate. After a spirited bash at Link Wray’s punkoid classic ‘Rumble’, The band finish off with the classic indie of ‘Town Where I was Born’, the perfect complement to the ‘NG6′ tippexed sloppily onto the band’s drum-kit.

“Shut your mouth and give us another bout” indeed.

The Mithered are cool enough to get away with falling into the modern day cliches of posing for a band photo after the gig and taking a selfie looking out into the venue, but they also focus their cameras and the spotlight onto their audience, a mix of Mods, Rockers, Tarquins, Family men and women (some of The Mithered’s relatives no doubt), and football hooligans again chanting the band’s name (if the band’s name was “Th’ Miyverd” that is).

What this group represent is punk rock in the purest sense, the feeling that fine songs will always win out over gimmicks, and that passionate music will eventually survive in our hearts and outdo the pop crap we have in the charts.

The Mithered are Nottingham’s indie shining lights.

Review by Marvin Red

Council is out now

The Mithered’s set was: