Lucid Rising + Supports @ The Frog & Frigate (Gig Review)

Opening the gig at the 120 capacity venue was a grunge rock wannabe-Nirvana four-piece called Radlouse, from Portsmouth. The band were wearing knitted sweats, band tees and checked shirts - immediately a judgement of their genre was predicted – grunge - and that's what they are. Amongst very simplistic guitar riffs, repetitive chords and dull drums were lyrics that screamed the romanticism of a toxic and hedonistic lifestyle - "Let’s go do some meds, let’s get out of our heads."

The second support was alternative rock band Posh Ellen, and considering they did their set without a bassist it was a well-executed two-piece performance. They opened with a bluesy rock n roll track, but most of their songs appeared highly influenced by the British rock two-piece 'Royal Blood'. Meanwhile they also had a grunge vibe going on within their set-list too. The drummer was excellent and so was the lead singer with his raw-edge vocals but they just need to find their own sound.

Headline act Lucid Rising came onto the stage very arrogantly, with a mismatch of people in the band. The rhythm guitarist was in a suit and cravat, the lead singer was in a striped shirt with his hair in a bun and chelsea boots, and the drummer was wearing a trilby hat with a moustache.

Immediately Paolo Nutini came to mind when lead singer, Ben Parker opened up the set with 'White Light' it sounded like Nutini’s earlier work in his ‘Sunny-Side Up’- album. Bassist, Louis Curtist played very simple chords, and it all seemed very safe. Parker saved the performance with his distinctive vocals, although for a blues band they didn’t want to make you get up and dance because their stage presence was very rigid.  When performing in an intimate venue it is much easier to get a crowd going and get them up and dancing,because there’s less people to entertain. Lucid Rising should have taken advantage of the intimate venue, but they just didn't create a vibe in which you felt comfortable dancing to because the band just weren't that into it.

A few covers were also sung, and for a headline act the set-list should consist of your own songs that you have written, with the exception of perhaps a cover song for the encore. It just seemed like they weren’t fully prepared to be a headline band, their cover of Led Zeppelin’s - ‘You Shook Me’ just proved that the singer could do without the band. He excelled in both guitar and his vocals within this performance – the bassist and drummer did not do anything that stood out at all, they just played their whole set incredibly safe. All of their song choices were very long in time, and covering a Led Zeppelin song at the start of your set isn’t the brightest of ideas - but it did attract most of your attention to Parker, as the rest of the band weren’t really doing much.

'Yer Blues’ by The Beatles was not a well-executed performance at all. The guitars were out of time with each-other on multiple occasions, and they also missed out a really vital chord. Covering a Beatles song is a brave move for any band as you have to do their songs justice because after all, they were the biggest band in the world. A headline band are expected to perform their own songs down to a T; and have them perfected, therefore a cover song should be a breeze. Every song they played sounded the same, resulting in a lot of people walking in-and-out for a fag as the performance was rather dull. The band as a whole just were not eye-capturing to watch, and I would rather watch the lead singer perform on his own; there was barely any on-stage connection either.

The closing track of their set was an original track called ‘I Get By’ and due to the audience all getting up to dance (and perhaps celebrating that their set was over) they started to feed off the vibe of the audience which resulted in this song being their best performance of the night. On the other hand if the audience had not have shown their support towards the end of the set, on their last song - would this have just been a dull performance like the rest?

In conclusion Lucid Rising have an incredibly long way to come in terms of development to reach the level of which their lead singer is on. The headline slot, was not for a band as underdeveloped as Lucid Rising, and I think in order to get their feet on the ground they need to start taking more support slots, take some time out to perfect their own songs, write some new ones and improve on their stage presence and look as a whole. For a band that aren’t particularly excelling in the musician department, there was a lot of playing instruments and not enough singing – lead singer Ben Parker needs to get some new band members or go solo because the rest of the band really need to improve in order to match his level of musicianship.