The most shocking thing about tonight’s Millencolin show, to me at least, is that it’s not more full than it actually is. Perhaps it’s because I spent four years working in this very venue during the height of millennial ska/punk boom (when we’d host at least one touring punk outfit plus supports every week, if not two or three) but it really feels like this is the demographic that the unstoppable rise of emo-pop has mostly replaced. The plus side of is that only the better bands have survived the glut.
And most of them tend to be American or European, it seems, while UK punk seems even more fixated than usual on recapturing all the crude aspects of the ‘77 gold-rush without any of the vitality and relevance. Point in case are tonight’s support band, Strawberry Blondes; I arrive two-thirds through their set and instantly regret not having arrived a little later still. Toneless three-chord progressions with cheap distortion triumphing over melody, quotidian bang-crash drumming, and gruff “I’m a well ‘ard street fightin’ man” shouting combine to encapsulate every criticism the mainstream has ever made of punk as a musical aesthetic. If you were being very charitable, you might suggest they were trying to update The Clash; more realistically, you’d probably pass them over as a shoddy Sham 69 tribute act who’ve tried writing their own material.
Strawberry Blondes even have the retro-oi! uniform sussed: sleeveless T-shirt emblazoned with the logos of bands who spilt up after two average albums long before their wearers were born; long thin mohawks; drainpipe jeans and braces. You could forgive it of a young band trying to find their feet, but the utter lack of any redeeming musical features is almost criminal from an act in this sort of support slot. Their misplaced sense of worth is the icing on the turd; during the squalling intro to their final song, their vocalist screeches that Strawberry Blondes “are the fuckin’ future of UK punk rock”. If he ’s right, then UK punk rock has truly become a race to the bottom, and is destined - finally - to rest in obscurity as a nostalgic subgenre that gets trotted out on music quiz programs for comedy value. Considering John Lydon’s face leering at me from butter adverts on billboards all around town, I think it’s probably high time, too - the shark was jumped long ago, and tonight’s underwhelmed audience would seem to agree.
And so, on to Swedish punk-pop stalwarts Millencolin who, to be honest, have always sounded more like the rock’n'roll acts their nation is so consistent at nurturing than any definition of punk as it’s commonly understood. They’re certainly not so “punk” as to not make sure their road crew are hidden behind a rank of Marshall stacks while they re-string and tune up their guitars in the interval.
But then, Millencolin are masters of stagecraft - something that’s obvious from the moment the four handsome short-haired guys bound onto the stage to the sound of a rumbling thunderstorm, dressed simply in black jeans and polo shirts with the logo of their latest album emblazoned tastefully over the right breast. And now it’s melodic sing-along pop tunes all the way, plenty of motion and charm without a hint of ego or smugness; Millencolin clearly love their work, and that enthusiasm shines through in a way that bands with some nebulous message or image to project never seem to manage. Their tunes are ridiculously accessible in the best possible way, so that even someone without a sound knowledge of their back-catalogue like myself finds themselves singing along to almost every tune as the band bound around the stage and pull guitar poses that are part irony but all enthusiasm - they know rock’n'roll’s a joke, but they also know it’s at its most fun when you play the part a little bit.
There’s not a hint of threat or machismo about Millencolin, which makes the lumpen posturing of Strawberry Blondes even less understandable as a support choice (while going a long way to explaining why no one in the audience gave a damn about them). Because this is very much an audience of die-hard fans; it feels like everyone but me here knows all the words to every song, and belts them out lustily at a volume that comes close to equalling the singing onstage, steadily whipping themselves into a froth of excitement to a soundtrack of clean bright melodies and simple sharp hooks. That said, some folk have a weird way of showing their affections; piss-bombing Robbie at Glasto is understandable, but I’ve never understood why people throw empty glasses at bands they actually like.
We’re about halfway through the set when, during a break between songs, some bloke bellows from the barriers, and the band ask him to repeat himself. “So what happened top the first three albums?” Ah, that inevitable staple of the die-hard fanbase - the elitist fan who was into the band way before you were, and isn’t afraid to tell everyone. And here Millencolin show their hand as master entertainers - they don’t ignore him, and they don’t get mad at him. Instead they turn the joke back on him and tuck the rest of the audience - me included - into their back pockets by responding “why haven’t we played any songs from the first three albums? I dunno, I guess we sold out or something” before frontman Nikola Sarcevic does a solo number with an acoustic guitar.
You could almost imagine that elitist-fan-man was a plant, because his complaint is used as a cue for Millencolin to “grudgingly” (read as “enthusiastically, with some theatre reluctance”) dig into the back-catalogue and give the hardcore fans what they’ve been wanting all along - with predictable results, as the push-and-shove-and-surf of the mosh pit cranks itself up another notch. This is one of those shows where between every song in the set you see shirtless sweat-soaked teenagers heading for the bar or the toilets to get something to drink, only to see them called back like the rats of Hamlyn by the opening chords of yet another favourite tune.
So, are Millencolin punk or not? I’m not entirely sure, but what tonight makes plain is that it doesn’t really matter, and that punk is just a term of convenience for marketing people. Millencolin are musicians, performers, minstrels, showmen… and that’s something that never goes entirely out of fashion.
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Posted in Live reviews |
Tags: Millencolin, pop, pop-punk, punk, rock'n'roll, Strawberry Blondes
