UNFUN RECORDS PRESENTS

The guys at Unfun Records treated us to a free gig at Fitzherbert’s on Thursday night, with a solid lineup of UK punk rock talent. A lot of the usual Brighton faces seemed to be absent tonight, probably a result of the carnage that was FIDLAR at The Haunt the previous night. Despite having been in the centre of aforementioned carnage, I tackled a hangover/crap day at work and made my way to the pub venue to catch these up-and- coming acts and drink tap water on my own.

First up was Emma Hallows, the punky, folky lady from Manchester. Her songs are heartfelt and sincere and without wanting to instantly name-drop two of the biggest names in the genre, she does bare similarities to early Frank Turner and City And Colour. More accurately though, if you’ve ever listened to the last four tracks on Defeater’s ‘Empty Days & Sleepless Nights’ then you will get a better idea as to what I’m describing. Unfortunately, as she was the first act her set overlapped with most people arriving, and their enthusiastic “Hiya man, how’s it going??!!”’s drowned out parts of the set and I missed what she was singing about.

Local boys River Jumpers almost had to pull out at the last minute due to their drummer being sick, but in the end they decided to play their first ever acoustic show. After a quick phone call to the ill sticksman so that the crowd could all shout “Get well soon, Max!”, they kicked off with ‘Chapters’, the opening track from the brilliant album of the same name. Plenty of people knowing the words and singing along created a great atmosphere when they played ‘Five Doors Down’ and ‘Diamonds’, during which one of the band member’s phones that was sat on top of an amp started ringing. It caused that annoying signal noise you get to cut through the music and the bassist had to remind everybody to put their phones into flight mode as “it’s about to get hectic”. It would’ve definitely got hectic if they had played a full set with the whole band, but it was still really good and they play Brighton shows often enough that you can be sure to catch them again soon.

Three Summers Strong, another Brighton band, demonstrate their fast and catchy snare-driven pop-punk. The gruff vocals sound almost hardcore at times and they perform with a lot of energy. I hear small touches of The Get-Up Kids, The Lawrence Arms and even Greenday in parts but it seemed like maybe they weren’t having their best night. Maybe they hadn’t set up as well as they’d have liked to, but the sound didn’t fill the room as well as it should have so it sounded a bit sketchy at times. It’s something you have to expect in that tiny room and I’ve heard it plenty of times from bands that sound great on recordings.

Woahnows, who released their awesome EP ‘Foma’ (on cassette!) through tonight’s host are next up. They have some great riffs and are incredibly tight when they play. Woahnows hail from Plymouth along with headliners As We Sink. There only need to be two great bands to come from one city for it to stick in my mental musical map, and I think Woahnows have made me realise that PLYMOUTH ROCKS. I’ve never been there. The band were very well received and I think these guys are going to go on to much bigger things. Their sound filled the room better than any of the previous acts, and an observation one of them makes about the fish tank behind the drummer made me consider something – maybe the fish really do hate all these loud punk bands playing in their house.

I felt sad for the fish for a minute and then As We Sink started and I stopped caring. It takes only two songs before the guys (and Emma Hallows) at the front decide to build a punk rock pyramid. I was half expecting the guy on top to come crashing down on the band, but instead he just fell into me and spilled the beer he asked me to hold all over my jacket. As We Sink are one of the most underrated bands in the UK at the moment. These guys truly deserve to be a big deal within the punk/emo/whatever scene. Their songs have some great, memorable choruses and the amount of people passionately singing along only reinforces this. A showcase of their new song goes down really well and I’m really excited to hear the follow up to EP ‘Ventures’. If you like Title Fight, The Movielife or Make Do And Mend then you really need to check these guys out. They are up there with the best.

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Words: Chris Biggs