Simon Rushworth
@ Middlesbrough Westgarth Social Club, May 7 2012
An audience at a working men’s club has never looked so fresh-faced and they are treated to an evening of music draped in youthful exuberance.
Starting with the incredibly impressive Bots, two 15-year olds from LA providing an almost perfect mimicry of a Primal Scream/Cypress Hill mashup, the boys from Tellison have a hard act to follow. But they more than match it.
Two things you’re guaranteed from a Tellison show is passion and gusto and the raucous Horses gets proceedings underway nicely. Throw in the gem that is Wasp’s Nest, a stand-alone single from 2009, the set has the makings of a crowd pleaser.
Gallery, as ever, goes down a storm as it harks back to Tellison in its infancy and the origins of many a fan’s obsession with the four-piece.
The track this tour is supporting, Freud Links the Teeth and the Heart, is a tune lead vocalist Stephen Davidson describes as a song about ‘psycho-analysis and generally being a creepy guy’ but it’s almost wistful nature fits perfectly with the nostalgic My Wife’s Grave Is In Paris.
Collarbone is a foot-stomper if ever there was one and the anthemic Henry Went to Paris entices a sing-along and finely illustrates a how a pop-punk hit should sound.
The night ends with Get On, a track which encompasses the frustrations endured in the four years between the band’s first and second albums, underlined by the closing thought of ‘we had a bad year, we lost everything’.
If Tellison deliver more nights like this then the following year is sure to be an improvement.
Jamie Durent