Live Review: City Calm Down, Mildlife, Rat & Co

Rat & Co's beat-driven, guitar-supported brand of electronica is far less “dissonant” than their Facebook description claims, thankfully, making for some beautiful tunes, especially when topped with Joshua Delaney's ambient vocals. The band's set for tonight is atmospheric enough to take you away to your own little world (especially if you close your eyes) despite the crowd's talkativeness.

Mildlife, on the other hand, appear incapable of creating an adequately structured song or, certainly, one where the vocals are in key. It appears we were spoilt by Rat & Co's wonderful subtleties and interplay between the light and dark points of their tunes, and it may be this fact that is making the lack of such interplay in Mildlife's songs even more apparent than it would otherwise have been. Either way, any magical feeling left by Rat & Co's set is well and truly eliminated by Mildlife's continuous drone.

City Calm Down are here tonight to launch their new Movements EP and Liberty Social is packed with extremely eager fans, the majority of whom appear to be caught in an '80s fashion wave with chambray shirts, upturned collars and '80s-style haircuts galore. By the time City Calm Down finally take to the stage, the excitement built up by the crowd plus the expectation based on what has been read about these local lads leads to a severe case of disappointment in this scribe. It's not that the songs are bad, per se, but they are not exciting and all sound the same. The one thing that City Calm Down do have on their side is accessibility. The music they're making is very consumer-friendly and it is clear why they have packed out this venue. They take electronic/dance music and make it mass-media friendly. This seems to be working in their favour, but that still does not negate the fact that there is nothing new here. Still, they're keeping the masses happy.