The Visitors + Torpedos + Momentum + Nik Karlberg - Messclean @ The Frog On The Front, Portsmouth. 12/05/06.

Back to business this week after Messclean was taken over for an evening last Friday by Total Carnage Promotions, who put on a some cracking metal bands that I had to miss due to the fact I was crewing over in Southampton for fecking Craig David...life can be a bitch sometimes! In the meantime Messclean went 'garden' for the evening and you can read all the gory details of cover versions, hospital trips, drugs, sex & rock n roll over at Messclean in their blog.

But anyway, on to my never ending mission of reviewing as many of the local bands as possible that pass through The Frog on a Friday evening and tonight the deep and thoughtful Nik Karlberg wins us over with a trio of delicate but robust acoustic numbers. The man has a tremendous voice, think along the lines of John Martyn, Ben Harper etc and you get the area he is working in. Nik has that air of being slightly distant and floaty, one almost expects incense to come wafting from the stage, not that he is the hippy dippy type, just that there seems to be a lot more to him that is immediately apparent. Although the set is short one can't help but be won over by the beauty of Blue Skies and the epic closer Speechless with it's drawn out ending and intricate patterns. An ever shifting artist that draws on wide influences and always interesting to listen to, a pleasing start to the evening.

Momentum are a shiny and sharp young band that appear to have a bit of parental support when it comes to equipment as they leave the stage bare when they complete their set and dismantle the equipment but anyway, as I said, Momentum are sharp, shiny young things pushing a neat line in safe indie electro pop. They certainly have the image sorted but lack that bit of stage flare at the moment that makes them slightly boring to watch but once they gain some experience then I fully expect them to be reducing venues full of teenage girls to tears with their boyish good looks and big pop choruses. In truth I think they surprise everyone tonight with just how good and polished they are and while it may be the wrong audience there is no doubt that they left a mark on everyone tonight with their chiming guitars and electro backbone. Not really my type of thing but I reckon if they were to play with the right sort of band that has young alternative fans then they would have a few labels sniffing around them in no time at all and the fact that the last thing I wrote down in my notebook before they finished was 'Impressed' says it all really.

Once Momentum and their parents/girlfriends had removed all their nice looking equipment the stage looked rather bare for Torpedos but do they give a flying fuck, course not. Torpedos are rock n roll, clad in their usual black attire they simply plug in and deliver another blinding set of eighties goth injected with a bit of balls. It's hard to add anything to my previous couple of reviews of this band as they are never going to change, if you don't like goth tinged rock music then you will hate them but if you are partial to a bit of darkness then step on up; stick them on somewhere like the Whitby Goth weekend and they would go down a storm not that they are strictly Goth but those with a taste for something with a harder edge would lap it up. Me, I love them with their retro guitar sound and Cure like bass that create some fine choruses just ripe for some of that Goth hands in the air dancing!

The Visitors are here to welcome the summer with their cheery acoustic flecked rock that brings to mind Counting Crows and the Chili Peppers and while it's all a bit nice and cheery for me there is no doubt that they are highly infectious and one can't help but enjoy chunks of their set. They specialise in that middle of the road lite rock with a funk edge, the kind of stuff that is annoyingly catchy and is played on the radio all over the summer and even though you don't want to like it you end up stuck with the tunes in your head. But it's well played and the majority of people in tonight are really enjoying the light melodies and easy going feeling they produce and an encore is demanded for which they roll out an Eminem tune that sees a large amount of people start shifting on their feet to make the most of the parting shot.

Nik Karlberg takes to the stage once again to round off the evening with a couple of chilled tunes and looks thoroughly surprised when Ross from The Visitors appears alongside him plugging in his guitar and a beat starts up behind courtesy of Matt from Little London who has popped in for a visit and an impromptu jam is started that runs and runs much to everyone's delight. It's the kind of unexpected treat that makes nights like these so special as a few people had left thinking it was the end but here we are listening to a group of people who are just running on adrenalin and skill and really enjoying what they are doing and for a non-musician such as myself it's fascinating watching them weave away, working off and with each other. Eventually Matt gives way to The Visitors drummer Dan (if I'm not mistaken...things started to get a bit hazy) who continues a fine groove and before long we see the arrival of a certain Kurt Kooder on stage to provide some extra vocals and a glorious sight it was too. A fine way to end the evening and glad I took a few snaps at the end to capture all these chaps on stage at the same time as it's unlikely it will be repeated. Those that left thinking it was all over missed a real treat here and that's always my excuse for staying until the bitter end, who said anything about squeezing in an extra pint of cider before staggering home?