The Hours: Live At Cargo
Words by Leanne Rae Wierzba
For most people Mondays are an unpleasant reminder of their banal workday reality, punctuated by stress, yawns, and a quick retreat back to the comfort of home and the reprieve of dreaming. They are not typically nights to remember, and I must admit that even in spite of having the erratic schedule of a freelancer, it has been a long time since I have spent a Monday night doing much more than hiding under a stack of blankets.
So it was a shock this past Monday when I arrived at Cargo to see the Hours in concert, that I could barely squeeze into the room amidst all of the other fans. Mind you, Jarvis Cocker and Damien Hirst aren’t your typical audience (not likely catching the first tube in the morning to their job in the city), and the Hours are not your typical Monday night hacks. Their sound streams across the room boldly and fluidly, while singer Antony Genn commands the stage with a presence that is at once understated and strong.
The songs are like a walk down rock music’s gilded brick road: pure pop gold, with beautiful melodies and progressive rhythms. Genn and bandmate Martin Slattery formed the band after attending a Radiohead concert in 2004, and certainly there are elements of Thom Yorke et al to their sound. However, their music has a resonance and clarity of its own. As a 7-piece band, they explore complex layers of sound while maintaining a singer-songwriter feel, which is held together by Slattery’s turns on the piano and Genn’s words. The songs explore the profundity of living and dying and getting along, and while they touch on the darker aspects of reality the message is fundamentally redemptive. They are Epic Soundtracks for the new millennium, transmuting despair and loneliness into hope and communication. These are songs my radio would like to play, that turned a cold evening in mid-May into a Monday night worth remembering.
Cargo was the fourth stop on their UK tour, promoting their new album See the Light. They will be back in London to open for Kasabian at the Brixton Academy, 16-17 July.
Posted Tue, May 26, 2009