The Raglan Rooms - out back of The Alma Arms - has a pretty small stage. So small, in fact, that there’s barely space for all five members of Not Advised and their respective instruments. Undeterred by their cramped conditions, the band are belting out a brash and catchy racket as if they were playing a major venue with a sell-out audience.
Being undeterred seems to be a Not Advised speciality. Forty-five minutes ago I was stood out in the beer garden with Jack Hairbrother, the band’s amiable mop-haired guitarist, as we tried to patch together his final broken cigarette with a Rizla by the dull glow of emergency lighting and mobile phone screens. A power cut struck the venue near the end of the first band’s set, and for a while it was uncertain whether there would be a show for Not Advised to play.
But Jack maintained a cheery optimism, chattering away about Not Advised’s recent recording session with Larry Hibbitt from Hundred Reasons, and his band-mates seemed to be in similar high spirits. Like I say, undeterred – these guys aren’t the miserable type.
That attitude shines through later when they’re up on that stage in front of fifty or sixty static skinny-jean-teens. “Play every show like it’s your last” is a performer’s cliché, but the Not Advised boys follow it to the letter – you get the impression that they’re probably just as full of beans when they’re rehearsing, their faces plastered with grins when not scrunched up in focus.
And it’s a happy noise they make, in marked contrast to the angsty bombast that seems to be the current flavour in the pop-punk market. Drawing from the bright melodic sing-along styles of Blink and Sum (but mercifully avoiding the puerile silliness and nasal West Coast accents), Not Advised belt out song after song and hook after hook, trying their best to work a crowd whose passivity is in stark contrast to the cacophony of shouting and screeching that accompanied the power-cut.
Frontman James Thomas has a strong voice and a natural line in stage patter, as well as a rakishly cheeky yet loveable face that probably hasn’t harmed the band’s female fanbase one bit. The band are tighter than the audience’s trousers, the rhythm section providing a rock-solid base for the twin guitars and Thomas’s vocals to stand upon.
It’s a sterling performance against all the odds and circumstance. All too often you’ll see a band headline a bigger venue and wonder what inspired someone to book them in the first place. When watching Not Advised, you’re never in any doubt, because it’s as plain as day – their performance oozes pace, energy and an infectious good-time vibe that had even this old cynic grinning and tapping his feet.
Pop-punk has suffered terribly at the hands of clones and bandwagon-jumpers, but every once in a while you stumble across a band who make you realise how that sound got so popular in the first place. Not Advised have all the pop sensibility without any of the cartoon bullshit, and it’s a pleasure to watch.
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