chorltonartsfestival's posterous

Cloud Control was a much-anticipated gig and, scheduled on the final Saturday night of festival week, the headline act for the whole of Chorlton Arts Festival. The four-piece have supported the likes of Vampire Weekend, Supergrass and The Magic Numbers, and recently won the Australian Music Prize (the equivalent of the Mercury in their native Oz). A BBC review of their album, Bliss Release, said this week: “The prospects of them storming the charts seem thunderously fine.”

When they took to the stage, however, I was thinking they might not really be my bag. Lead singer and guitarist Alister Wright had his hood up on his anorak, which led me to believe, mistakenly, that they were nothing more than a Madchester-throwback band, despite being from the Blue Mountains near Sydney.

But as the set progressed, the hood came down and eventually the coat came off, and it quickly became clear the band are unique in their sound and very polished in their performance. I was impressed by Alister's vocal harmonisation with keyboardist Heidi Lenffer and there were some lovely key changes, and I was very much liking the guitar fuzzbox and the bass reverb.

After the slightly trippy Into The Line, off their EP, came an album track, There's Nothing In The Water We Can't Fight, which was a brilliantly stomping number and got the band's money's worth out of drummer Ulrich Lenffer (Heidi's brother). Another Bliss Release song, 6 Music single of the week Gold Canary, also went down a storm, especially with the fans in the crowd (of which there seemed to be quite a critical mass!).

Bass player Jeremy Kelshaw did most of the links and chats, and at one point asked the audience how often Chorlton Arts Festival runs. “Once a year?” he said, disbelieving. “It should be twice!” Aw shucks.

Words: Sarah-Clare Conlon. Check out her award-winning blog Words & Fixtures.

Image courtesy Simon Faircloth All rights reserved by Cloth69