Fight Like Apes - Proud Galleries, London, 22/5/2008

  by Anthony Dhanendran

published: 24 / 5 / 2008

intro

At the Proud Galleries in London, Anthony Dhanendran watches Dublin indie-punks Fight Like Apes play an incoherent, but catchy and ultimately genre-defying set

It’s not every day you get to play underneath Mike Figgis’ signature. But that day is today for Fight Like Apes, who take the large stage nonchalantly, surrounded for some reason by prints of the film director’s photographs (it’s for an exhibition; they’re not bad, if a little Gilbert-and-George-esque). The four-piece, who hail from Dublin, appear to have come from four different bands. Singer MayKay, resplendent in a black top, huge fuzzy hair and silver hotpants, has a whole Lufthansa Terminal thing going on, while keyboardist ‘Pockets’ is dressed as an archetypal indie kid and guitarist Tom, tall and thin, resembles Napoleon Dynamite’s more successful cousin. Drummer Adrian looks like, well, a drummer. Drummers all look the same. In common with the rest of the band, though, he’s very good. They form a tight unit, something not often found in bands playing the bottom of a long bill. With that in mind, their set is necessarily short, but they manage to squeeze plenty of genres into a set lasting a little over twenty minutes. They open with a languid post-rock theme accompanied by burbling synths that turn out to be the only constant to the set. That descends into cacophony at the end, to be replaced by a beat and their first ‘real’ song. Essentially it’s a pop-punk number, with MayKay coming across as part-Lush, part-snarling-Sioux. There’s a metallic twang to her voice that lends more than a little of the Flying Lizards to the mix too. The next couple of songs take in more punk pop, before abruptly changing gears to take in a kind of Breeders/Pixies hybrid. Most of the songs are catchy, and their breakout song 'Johnny Summers' has all the hallmarks of being a big hit. It’s not a coherent set, but that’s not something we tend to expect from thrashy indie-punk bands, is it ? It’s certainly entertaining – the only question is whether they can pick one of the many genres they’re capable of playing, and stick to it.

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