By Rich Hill
The Skints – assisted by strong support from Gecko & Current Swell – rounded off their headline tour in fine style at a sold-out Exeter Phoenix on Friday night.
Friday 31st May was the day the Summer finally came to Exeter and the sunshine lasted well into the night courtesy of the finest gig I’ve been to for some time. The Skints topped off their UK headline tour at Exeter Phoenix; having played their home-town gigs in the middle of the tour. Given the reaction from an ecstatic Exeter audience you could be forgiven for thinking this was a local band making a triumphal return home.
One person who was making a return home was Gabriel, keyboard player for Gecko, the first of two support acts. Gecko describe their music on their Facebook page as ‘Tropical Pop’, a description which was perfect for a performance on Friday. Their bright, bouncy and humour-laced blend of pop-reggae has a summery feeling and warmed up the growing audience perfectly. It isn’t often you see the headline act dancing at the side of the stage to their support bands but that was the case on Friday. The respect and admiration The Skints have for the bands that supported them on this tour was evident and great to see. Hopefully we’ll see Gecko back in Exeter soon, they combine catchy tunes with clever, funny sing-along lyrics and could coax a smile from even the grumpiest, most sunburnt member of their audience! For an example check out their track Guanabana Juice from last year’s Pigeon EP – highly recommended.
Whilst it is easy to understand why Gecko are such a good choice to support The Skints, at first glance Current Swell appeared to me to have wandered in to the wrong gig. Denim-clad, Canadian Roots-Rock isn’t the style that immediately springs to mind to support a reggae/ska/punk band from London. There are, however, two very good reasons why Current Swell were the perfect band to sandwich between Gecko and The Skints. Firstly, the contrast in style broke the evening into identifiable sections and secondly because they were quite simply superb! The words I jotted down to describe them during their set were ‘stomping, hair-whipping energy’. This is a band that serve no half measures on stage. The party atmosphere created by Gecko was ramped up a few notches with a succession of driving, intense tunes. Featuring slide guitar and harmonica, bass and drums, Current Swell have an urgency that grabs the audience and throws them into a frenzy of foot-stomping, leaping involvement. There is little that is subtle about their live performance, even a more reflective song beautifully dedicated to a late friend becomes a passionate thrash of guitar and bass. It does one good to challenge your prejudices once in a while. Current Swell are not a band that would usually feature on my radar and I was sceptical when they took the stage, very quickly won over, energised, delighted and, by the end of their set, yelling for more. Check Current Swell out on-line at http://currentswell.com/, but if you get the chance to see them live don’t pass it up!
The Skints chose their support acts well but there is always the danger with great support that the headline act will may find themselves eclipsed. Not much chance of that happening with The Skints – the finale performance of a superb evening underlined why the band is so highly-regarded and why the Phoenix was absolutely packed on Friday. Taking the stage and launching straight into the melodica intro of Rise Up, The Skints gave us a set that kick-started Summer in a big way. They delivered a mixture of older tracks, tunes from the Part & Parcel album, a few choice covers and brand-new material, all belted out with passion, energy and very warranted self-belief. After a storming opening new material was introduced to an audience already eating out of the palm of their collective hands. Well-chosen covers worked to bring old and new together in a seamless flow of great tunes. Despite strong competition from reggae classics such as No, No, No and Stop That Train the stand-out cover was the wonderful On A Mission. As this may be one of their tracks that many present were most familiar with it shows a well-deserved confidence to find this tune quite early in a very well balanced set list. This time it was the turn of the support acts to occupy the wings and they flung themselves around with equal joy and abandon as the rest of the room – the affection and chemistry evident between these bands added a very special element to the evening. In such a superb set it is hard to pick out individual tracks that stood out but if forced to choose I’d say Lay You Down & Ratatat chimed especially well with a very good-natured and enthusiastic audience.
Musically the band are accomplished and a complete package. Whereas with some bands I find my attention focussing on one or two members; The Skints are best viewed as a whole. This isn’t to say that individually they don’t impress as musicians – quite the contrary – but they present as a band that are much more than the sum of its parts. Vocal duties are shared between Jamie on drums, Josh on guitar and Marcia who played no less than five instruments in the course of the show. The essential and distinctive bass-lines are provided by Jon. The interaction with their audience is warm and although this audience was predominantly younger, there were enough nods to their reggae heritage to please those of us of more advanced years. It takes more than technical musical ability to create music that is clearly an evolution of classic ska, dub and reggae yet also new and exciting – it requires a passion for the music aligned with creativity and the bravery to take the music forward. I have always found this evident in The Skints’ recorded material but they take this to an altogether higher level on stage.
Releases and tour dates for The Skints can be found on http://www.theskints.co.uk/ and they are close to hitting the top 10 of the UK Reggae Chart with Out My Mind. This glorious weather we’re experiencing is sure not to last too long, so check out The Skints and bring some sunshine into your Summer, whatever the weather! Watching the audience file out after the band’s storming encore on Friday I saw wall-to-wall smiles and the word that dropped most often from the lips of this happy crowd summed the evening up perfectly: “Outstanding”.