Saturday night saw The Prince Albert pub play host to yet another amazing line-up of bands from Modern Age Music.
The energy didn’t let up as Rare Devices, Snayx, Fairway and Five Kites rocked the crowd with ghosts, pop-punk Justin Bieber covers and nineties alt-grunge sounds.
Rare Devices opened, a Brighton-based band with a unique mix of genres in their set – alt-rock meets harmonies, mixed with melodic lyrics and inventive mix pedal usage. Their setlist included ‘This is The End As We Know’, ‘Razor Blades’, and ‘Atelophobia’, which came out today. Their energy on stage was engaging, and they had some very cool distorted vocals on songs like ‘Liar’. They also had a person dressed as a ghost on stage for ‘Deadhouse’, and I can definitively say I’ve never seen a band do that before.
They were followed up by Snayx, who had a riff-heavy, alt-rock sound and some very strong views to go with it. It’s so great to see a band who not only clearly love what they do, but enjoy performing with each other, and the closeness between the duo was clear. Not only have they been featured on BBC Music Introducing South, but they’re big supporters of Independent Venue Week and encouraging people to vote. They mentioned a song coming out later this year that’s about Brexit (no prizes for guessing their political views) and they took a moment to criticise Slowthai for his actions at the NME Awards the night before – ‘respect your women!’. Definitely check them out – time to get snaykey.
Fairway were such a contrasting act that it’s hard to know where to begin. You don’t expect the Thunderbirds countdown, ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ and a noughties pop-punk sound to mix but they just work when Fairway does it. Despite saying ‘we can tell by your faces you all really love Justin Bieber but we’re really not sorry’, they launched into a version of Bieber’s ‘Sorry’ with so much passion and such a convincing mimic of the song’s ‘ooh, ooh’ during the chorus that you’d think it was the real thing. They did say they’re never doing it again though, so make of that what you will. They’re a very new band, only launching this time last year, but their debut single ‘Fade Away’, released September 2019, was responded to with so much love that you’d think they were a regular on the Brighton gig circuit. They’ve promised they have lots of new material that they’ll be recording soon, so I’m expecting good things to come from them!
Headliners Five Kites, one of the city’s favourite alt-rock bands, closed the night. Songs ‘Middle Ground’ and ‘Help Yourself’ went down great with the crowd, as did brand new song ‘Love It Alone’ (which was meant to be out on Valentine’s Day but they fell asleep and forgot to post it). It was an electric start to their six-date UK tour, and even better than when I saw them at The Alternative Escape 2019 as part of Modern Age Music’s stage. The Uckfield-hailing band had some beautiful harmonies and a very nineties grunge sound – they insist that despite their hometown they’re ‘anything but’ posh – and were a very natural headline act for this sold out show.
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