LIVE REVIEW: Lower Slaughter, Marginal Gains @ The Old Coal Yard, Newcastle (25.10.24)

Image: Lower Slaughter by Lee Fisher

It’s good to have the Brave Exhibitions crew doing it again, and it’s wonderful to see The Old Coal Yard coming into its own as a live venue, it deserves to become a regular part of the circuit. This was my first experience of Marginal Gains and they were a delight. In my fevered imagination I like to imagine the three musicians were onstage at Little Buildings or somewhere, turning in a set of really lovely indie pop, full of overlapping harmonies and sinuous rhythms (think Warpaint or The Breeders), when a drunk hardcore fan wandered in, grabbed a mic and let rip like a Hate5Six regular. Dan – for it is he – is a natural, slightly unhinged showman (so much so that the others were barely repressing laughter at some of his antics) and while on paper this set-up shouldn’t work, it really really does. Marginal Gains are exciting and pretty new and I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Lower Slaughter have had a fitful ‘career’, perhaps because of ever-changing vocalists: first there was Max Levy, who I last saw freaking out the Supernormal beer tent with what I vaguely remember as a gabba-ed up K-Pop DJ set; then ex-Divorce singer Sinead Young, an absolute powerhouse; and now Barney Wakefield, formerly the bassist, has taken on the role he was clearly born to fill, a swaggering, charismatic, comedic but ferocious frontman, swerving between mic-cable-round-the-fist punk commitment and promoting their merch in the style of Jools Holland. The band have always been very much in the noise rock/post-hardcore vein but with a swing and a looseness that made them stand out – as much like Pavement and Superchunk as the more usually referenced Pacific North-West outfits. They really threw it down tonight, with Barney delivering a bleak state-of-the-nation poetry over properly slamming riffs at odds with the between-song charm. This was a killer bill. More, please.