Livereviews

The Manikins + Space Cowboys
- Stengade 30, Cph, March 17th

For some reason, I rarely seem to meet any of my fellow lowcutters at shows these days, which I take it is because I rarely seem to go to any straight garage rock’n’roll shows these days. Tonight, though, with not much else happening, the wife having a girly night, and with a visiting Madrileño to show the city, Swedish punk garage r’n’r seemed as good a bet as any.
In so far as getting to meet friends and colleagues and chat with them, it was perfect, since we can’t have been more than 20 people in the audience, a fifth of these LowCut-associated. That’s Cph for you, but then again, it might’ve been any European capital on a bad night. It’s a small enough scene, that if too many bands play too many nights in a row, the entire scene can suffer a collective hangover and decide to stay in with bad telly and track suit. The bands themselves weren’t to blame: If nothing extraordinary, they weren’t half bad either, and to their credit, both bands made a run for it, despite the poor turn-out.
Space Cowboys were so Swedish to look at, it nearly hurt: Pat down to the stupid hat and the junkie-chic, with jeans so tight you could’ve dressed the whole band in the textile it takes to make one pair of my baggy pants, they offered nothing new to the Ramones/Hellacopters stable, but they played with enough energy for us never to be bored.
Manikins, however, as my editor would lean over to tell me within the first minute of their set, were in a totally different league: Not that they were too original, either, but they were so fast and so tight that it didn’t matter any. Hives-y, sped-up punk r’n’r with breaks thrown in everywhere, this was excellent, even had my normally rock-shy, hardcore-following, Madrileño friend dancing like an ass for the better part of their set. Only two small complaints: From what I heard, the lyrics sounded awful, old school boy-meets-girl stuff that didn’t do the revolutionary fervour justice. An drop the uniforms – as another colleague of mine would add a few days on: “That’s so August 2000!”

Jon A