Live Review: Rag N Bone, Aborted Tortoise, Night Signals, Dream Rimmy, Shit Narnia

Rag N Bone’s Wood And Wire single launch at the Flyrite was a grand musical entrée, supported by four other enjoyable bands that provided their own musical slices to compliment the launch.

Punk rock was a forerunner at the beginning of the evening with Shit Narnia. With a crunchy, crisp tone to entice the audience into a rock-steady fervour, the inclusion of screaming vocals created a dissonant Doors-esque atmosphere for the audience to crash into.

Dream Rimmy, who are mostly well-known for their shoegaze-centric tracks, carried off Shit Narnia’s rawness into a psychedelic-infused ‘90s anthem with the track Sunshine containing slowly undulating chord progressions and lengthy reverbed vocals that evidently outlined their greatest asset as a band, their rhythm section. Down also provided the crowd with a heavily-reverbed rhythmic track filled with lilting, echoing melodies and faintly drifting vocals from lead singer Ali Flintoff and her backing singers.

Night Signals were the third act of the night, their track, Faraway, stirring an ominous atmosphere throughout the venue through its slow stirring of chord progressions combined with lead singer Skye Groenveld’s deeply brooding vocals. Another track, Nobody’s Girl, provided the crowd with a quick, anticipating beat that drew a few enthusiastic listeners to move wildly as the quick, successive melodies from the lead guitarist propelled the track forward, easily making Night Signals one of the more addictive bands of the night.

Aborted Tortoise, the only band to combine a dubiously ethical medical process with reptiles, managed to carry off an impressive plethora of salty surf-rock tunes with Chicks Dig Scabs creating a large difference in rhythm between chorus and verse, effectively tapping and switching the audience movement settings between gentle mosh and batshit crazy. The band continued with Sewer Rats, which continued to electrify the crowd, effectively establishing Aborted Tortoise as the night’s party band.

With the supporting bands now finished, it was now Rag N Bone’s turn to rule the stage, opening their set with the characteristic rawness the band embodies, with new single, Wood And Wire, being no exception. Filled with mischievous riffs and progressions that daringly invited the listener to thrash about, the song enveloped the pumped crowd with certain tenacity, with the repeated lines of “It’s just wood and wire” from the strong vocals of lead singer Kiera Owen that effectively carried across the band’s intensive rock beat towards the already audibly famished crowd.