Live Review: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - La Belle Angele, Edinburgh 22/05/2023
Visiting from Oz, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets took to Edinburgh’s cowgate this week in a packed out La Belle Angele.
Edinburgh crowds were thoroughly buttered up this week after being treated to Australia’s gold-standard in modern psychedelic rock. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are no strangers to the Scottish capital and truly no crumbs were left behind after Monday’s madness. The buzz from the audience was audible from down the street and as you got deeper into the venue, the grey Edinburgh spring made way for a technicolour fever dream full of metallics and leather. Many bands have adopted the flower aesthetic over the years but these lads from down under showed that they really are the upper crust as they created that sense of chaotic yet controlled experimentation that truly gets to the root of what psychedelic rock can do.
The responsibility of getting things started fell on the very capable shoulders of Brooklyn band ‘acid dad’. They’ve been touring with PPC for a while now and the love between the two bands is abundantly clear. They open with Creature and immediately the audience are pulled in; heavy distortion is set against bright swirling projections and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were entering a wormhole or kaleidoscope. Despite just the three guys on stage, their sound hits you like a truck and the chemistry between the guys gives a real sense of brotherhood. Everything brilliantly blends together and the lack of chitchat between songs allows for the angst and grittiness of the music to take full hold. ‘Marine’ and ‘Organic’ were particular highlights for both me and the crowd and by the end of the set the room was vibrating with such intensity that the projector filling the stage with shapes and pictures was bobbing along too. The ending of their set was bittersweet, especially for the front portion of the crowd who had gotten a mosh pit going but quickly everyone grew excited and fervent with the anticipation of what was to come next.
The lights go black and suddenly, Nessun Dorma starts playing. A single white spotlight illuminates the stage and as the aria reaches its climax, PPC take to the stage. The crowd are airborne, screaming along to Pavarotti and cheering the epic entrance. Frontman Jack McEwan wholeheartedly reciprocates this energy, proclaiming his love for the city and its people.
‘Between here and Perth, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. I’d come live here in a heartbeat; it's the most beautiful city in the world. If this is Edinburgh on a monday night, the fuck do you guys get up to on a saturday?’
Once the rapturous applause has quietened enough for the music to be heard, they open with ‘Bill’s Mandolin’ quickly followed by ‘Acid Dent’. The stage is ablaze with colour and the crowd becomes a sea of hands in the air and heads banging along to the beat. It’s incredibly refreshing to see a distinct lack of phone screens and camera lights in the audience-everyone is experiencing the music in the moment and vibing along. The lead guitar lines shared between Luke Parish, Chris Young and frontman McEwan are packed with zest and immediately get stuck in your head. The musicianship from these guys is top notch and switcheroos and instrument swapping throughout the set only goes to show that these guys really are on a roll.
Things heat up with latest release ‘Nootmare K-I-L-L-I-n-G Meow’ and the speedy shredding and basslines courtesy of Wayan Biliondana get everyone up and moving. McEwan and Parish really show off their singing ability in ‘Lava Lamp Pisco’, a track whose chorus calls for sky high notes (C/D4) that rival Justin Hawkins and even the Nessun Dorma we heard earlier. It’s a number taken from their latest album ‘Night Gnomes’ and it's amazing over the course of the evening to see how their sound has evolved over the years. Everyone is performing with a ferocity and passion that makes you fear for the wellbeing of their instruments but such is the way in rock ‘n’ roll. A special celebration has to be had for the amount of hairography on stage, particularly for Biliondana who despite not having the same Loreal worthy tresses as everyone else truly throws his all into his thrashing.
Things take a somewhat jazzier shift on ‘Dependent on Mary’ which sees drummer Danny Caddy and Young (now playing keyboard) swinging together as McEwan laments on trying and failing to live the ‘bohemian life’. Like a classical symphony, the track is full of different movements which give it so much variation and colour. Two or so minutes in, the tone turns entirely on its head and things are brought way down. The guitar line is suspended over everything in a kind of fractured and picked apart version of the melody we had before and we really get some well deserved shade and rest-bite after a whole lot of fantastic frenzy. The vocals now have a floatiness and airiness which mirrors the lyrics: ‘Rolled my head into this indulgence, rolled my head straight off into my heart. And I can’t say me’. What goes up though must come down and we go straight back into the melly of things as the track comes to a close. New and yet to be properly released ‘Dilemma us from Evil’ is gritty, gnarly and great fun. Before singing it, McEwan explains that the track was written with a joke about bands in mind : ‘don’t put a microphone in front of your face trying to be cool’. Not wanting to give too much away, the track features a well placed shaker from Parish and gives space for McEwan to really show off his rasp. When we can expect it to come out is anyone’s guess.
The evening closes out with ‘Cornflake’ and without need for lots of persuading, an encore performance of ‘Hymn For a Droid’, their most well known tune. Between verses, the energy in the room is momentous; in classic Scottish style the mosh pit are all ‘taps aff’ waving their shirts around crazily to the music. Parish and Young joined in at one moment and it’s clear that they’re having just as much fun as the crowd. The 600 person strong chants for more were reminiscent of the scenes of a Spartan battlefield and the number of bright eyes, bared teeth grins and arms in the air only paint this image more vividly. The audience flagrantly ignore the signs prohibiting crowd surfing but even the bar staff at this point have joined in with the joyous madness and are having too much of a good time to tell anyone off.
The tour continues with dates around Europe with a break before the guys head back across the Atlantic for the American leg. Tickets are proving a lottery for a select few as most venues have already sold out and many set to follow suit in the coming weeks. Most exciting on the calendar perhaps is their slot aboard the SS Neverender which sets sail from Miami to the Dominican Republic in the Autumn or their feature at 8 Festival in Vilnius Lithuania where they will be performing inside a decommissioned prison. Over the summer break, the crumpet heads are headed back to the motherland and with new songs on the setlist we live in hope that more releases are on the horizon.
Words by Kirsty-Ann Thomson
