Interviews and Reviews

Flanders, Effigy

The Waiting Room
Newport, Sunday 24 September 1995

The Waiting Room were already on stage by the time I arrived, playing to a decent size crowd of enthusiastic supporters. A very young three piece, influenced by American guitar bands. They produced a good set of guitar pop with plenty of variety, show casing some good song writing talent. On the downside the lead singer/guitarist voice is not strong enough at present to hold all the high notes. He also has a nice collection of guitars, but hedid not need to change them over at what seem to bethe end of every song, the long pauses just broke any momentum that had been built up. Still The Waiting Room showed plenty of promise.

The more I see Effigy the more I like them. It has taken me some time to warm to their to moody and intense pop. However, I know they gained some instant converts from the audience tonight. This was the best set I have seen Effigy play, they were more relaxed and confident than ever before.

Small (from the Butterfly CD) is Effigy at their most accessible and opened the proceeding, enticing the crowd forward. From here the band proceeded to weave their way into the crowd's mind with their dark and intricate brand of pop. If you taste in pop music to go beyond fuzzy guitars and songs about lost love, them invest some time in listening to Effigy you will be rewarded.

Flanders have graduated from the J Mascis school of making great noises from a guitar with honours. Flanders have that American guitar pop sound, (reference points Dinosaur Jr, Buffalo Tom), what distinguishes them from the crowd of similar bands is their vocals. Far more subtle, far more depth than your average band and with the vocal duties shared between the guitarist and bass player, to the extent of sharing lead vocal duties within songs, far more interesting.

And when you get use to the shared vocal arrangement, the bass player and guitarist swap roles. Definitely a band with talent in both performing and song writing. The same talent is not evident in the choice of covers, because for an encore the audience was treated to a shambling chaotic version of Nena's 99 Luft Balloons . Later I was assure by their manager that was the first and only time that song would be performed by Flanders . Still I enjoyed it in a strange sort of way. The rest of the set was far more impressive.

Overall, the whole evening was very enjoyable, starting with the youthful enthusiasm of The Waiting Room, through the dark and intriguing moody pop world of Effigy and finishing with the guitar pop sounds of Flanders.

Tonight showed there are good pop bands in Perth.

Nick Cowie
Treadmill

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