Social Room ooze 90s vibes. Guitar-heavy songs, accompanied by toned down vocals and all the power of a great drum beat, plus the addition of a piano, which is quite unusual for a band usually labelled as “indie-rock”.
The stage presence of this sextet from Seaham, near Sunderland, in one word could be described as ‘full-on’, because six people on the tiny stage of the bunker at the Head of Steam where we went to see them, was quite impressive. The limited space, in my humble opinion, makes it even better. I’m a big fan of the “basement” or “bunker” or whatever you want to call it. For once, size did not matter, and actually small worked perfectly fine here – more intimate, more contact with the crowd and who cares if when you leave you’re basically suffering with tinnitus, for how close you were to the speakers?!?!
Matty Smith on lead vocals has the same appeal of all the iconic frontmen of any majour indie brit band of the 90s. Now, it wouldn’t take me much to start a long list of names, from those two famous brothers and their rivals – both in music and style – who dictated men hairstyles in this country for those who were “mad fer” a certain kind of music, for the best part of the past 20 years to say the least. However I won’t list. I hate lists. They’re limiting and often making specific comparisons is never quite suitable… Just give Matty and his band a look when they are on stage and you’ll be able to recognise their influences.
It’s a pretty damn good musical mix these guys have come up with, though! Got everyone in the room hooked on their songs, “One more round” is definitely one of our favourites – we’ve been playing it over and over and over in the office since we’ve seen them live!!
This six piece band have developed their own individuality and growing their fan base over the past few years, and they’ve been doing it the old way. Today, they’re definitely a band to keep an eye on, and we can’t wait to see them again this summer playing at Lindisfarne Festival.
“Won’t you join for one last round, one more drink before we go?”
S.