REVIEW: Music For Kits @The Leeds Library
- Rhiannon Boden
- Mar 18, 2017
- 3 min read
One Sided Horse, Glass Mountain and Emerald Sunday play at The Leeds Library as part of the Music For Kits charity fundraiser.
As amazing as the alternative music scene can be, it can’t be denied that we sometimes forget what’s really important. We get caught up in drama between fanbases or spend all our time complaining about festival headliners, and we forget that music is really about improving lives and bringing people together; that’s why events like Music for Kits are so important. Created in support of the One Big Family - Helping The Homeless charity, Music for Kits was a night set up to help raise money for the most vulnerable people in society, helping to provide them with the essentials they need to live. Hosting the night at The Library’s Lending Room only served to reaffirm this message, as they picked a venue with the perfect mix of student nightlife energy and vibrant community spirit.
The night was opened by Emerald Sunday who, despite not being a local band, embodied that spirit perhaps more than anyone else. Travelling all the way down from Dundee, they delivered a classically quintessential rock show, with everything from tongue-in-cheek dance moves, Suede-esque vocals and more killer riffs than should be constrained to just an opening slot.
Their set bounced between tracks like When The River Runs Red that smacked of the American south, to more Brit-poppy fare like We The People. Synth and harmonies and guitar solos abounded throughout, as did the frontman’s penchant for getting incredibly close to his bandmates, and the sheer scale of the energy they brought had the crowd warmed up in no time.
Glass Mountain were next, and where Emerald Sunday brought a tried and tested vintage sound, Glass Mountain were a band perfect for today’s audience. Their thrift-shop fashion and slouchy, disenfranchised cool, were maybe at odds with the slightly older crowd that made up the majority, but any doubts they had were dispelled essentially straight away.
Despite having a week from hell in which cars were scratched, laptops lost, bass guitars left behind and then stole, the four-piece delivered an earnest and authentic set, pausing only to talk about the importance of the cause they were there to support.
Their mix of fuzzy, distorted noise and cool, ambient synth was a pleasure to listen too from beginning to end, but offerings from their new release “Cowboy Song” were a definite standout. For a band who have already garnered so much praise from the likes of Clash magazine and BBC Introducing, it’s hard to see a limit to how far they could go, and their new releases only confirm them as a band to keep an eye on.
Finally though, it was time for One Sided Horse, a project that started out as an amalgam of other talented artists and ended as a force to be reckoned with in its own right. Founded by Mark Whiteside, who is perhaps most famous for his role as the drummer and lead vocalist of Evil Blizzard, he was joined on stage by four fifths of Yorkshire alternative rockers Embrace. However, despite the many and varied influences of the musicians present, what followed was a cohesive and somewhat folksy affair, even if it got off to a somewhat shaky start.
After a good natured kerfuffle in which the band collectively realised they couldn’t tune their instruments and appealed to the crowd for help, they settled for ballpark tuning on the premise that it “never did Neil Young any harm”, and got down to the main business of showing everyone else how it should be done. More melodic and haunting than his previous work, though no less powerful, Mark and co delivered a set that felt both expertly crafted and endearingly casual. The lyrics were solemn, but the atmosphere was anything but, and left the crowd in major anticipation of the constantly-teased but not yet materialised debut album.
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