Gaul was divided into three parts
– Julius Caesar
All three of the female fronted prog (or gorp) bands that grew out of the ashes of the original incarnation of Karnataka have been touring in October, making it a busy month gig-wise for those of us that actually like all three. I’ve already reviewed The Reasoning, who were on tour at the beginning of the month, the second part of the month was the turn of the other two bands, Panic Room and the new incarnation of Karnataka.
First was Panic Room at the Little Civic in Wolverhampton. I hadn’t seen this band since their very first gig at Lydney back in April, not counting the ill-fated gig at The Peel where I didn’t actually get to see them play because of a power failure. The Little Civic is one of those slightly tatty but loveable small venues, walls covered in posters. It’s basically just the upstairs room of a pub, with the stage at one end of a long narrow room. As is normal for this sort of gig, the place contained an awful lot of familiar faces, from the infamous HippyDave to Mostly Autumn’s Andy Smith, who was doing the lights.
Support was Quecia, playing with an acoustic lineup consisting of two female vocalists and two acoustic guitarists. I’m afraid they didn’t really do a lot for me; their lead singer has an excellent voice, but none of their songs were strong enough to be memorable, at least for me.
Panic Room have definitely grown as a band since I saw them last. They’ve got a very different sound live than on record; rather than the complex multi-layered approach of their album Visionary Position, on stage their music is harder-edged and more guitar driven; for instance, on ‘Apocalypstick’, Paul Davies’ guitar replaces the absent electric violin. They’re not resting on their laurels when it comes to material; the set included no fewer than five new songs written since the recording of the album. A couple of those, the quite poppy ‘Into the Fire’ and the very spiky ‘Go’ had been in the set in April, but the others were completely new, including the vaguely industrial-sounding ‘Black Noise’ written by Alun Vaughan. The strength of the new stuff is such that they could afford to leave out a couple of songs from the album.
High spot was the first encore, a full band arrangement of ‘Blood Red Skies’, a song from Anne-Marie’s solo album “The Contact”. This was a powerful song when I heard it 18 months ago performed as a solo acoustic number; backed by the whole band it’s an absolute barnstormer. The small but enthusiastic audience wasn’t prepared to let them get away with just one encore, and they were back again for their take of Led Zep’s ‘No Quarter’.
That was definitely a good one. Paul Davies was in fine form on guitar, completely recovered from his hand injury that caused him to miss the end of a gig last month. And Anne-Marie Helder, despite apparently suffering from a really bad lurgy, still gave a fantastic vocal performance, and looked extremely sexy (if I’m allowed to say something like that in these politically-correct times).
