Fungus Licks / 33 Thieves
Posted on 18th July 2011
Fungus Licks / 33 Thieves
Market
Thursday, July 14
I had not been to Market since it was Delfter Krug, and then precious little — not the clubbing sort of guy am I — but Market is suddenly pursuing a refreshing live music policy these days — and I like their food.
The music takes place upstairs where there are two rooms, a lobby and the music room with bar in the corner. It is not huge, 60 people would pack it, but it has a very high ceiling and the corner stage is very elevated, probably a meter above the floor. That's nice, and unusual except in much larger venues. There are tables and a dance floor, though during Fungus Licks people were dancing in the lobby. The sound system is speakers on tripods, but it sounds good, better than most of the other small venues. So that's the venue, comfy and easily above average.
33 Thieves are new skool R&B, a girl singer, a drummer, a guitarist and the fully fledged fourth member, a laptop operated by the guitarist. Sophisticated funk grooves were the order of the day and for the longest time I couldn't match the guitarist's fretboard movements with the sounds coming out. There were bass lines, synth strings, multiple keyboards, a great wash of sound surrounding Heidi's strong vocals, all poinned down by the live drums.
Heidi has a big, lower-range voice, good timing and delivery. Either she has a limited range (no shortcoming; the greatest singer of all time, Billie Holiday, had an extremely narrow range) or the songs are written without melody a priority. Whichever, she does a good job of it. As the set progressed, the music got tougher; you began to hear Si playing edgy funk rhythm guitar, Jimmy Nolan style. This was good, it brought the music into focus, made it seem a bit more like an interactive live band (it was interesting to note that Heidi introduced each song as a “track”). It is early days for 33 Thieves, they have some growing to do as a truly live act and as songwriters, but they have the elements to continue in the great British tradition of such as Yaz and Soft Cell.
Fungus Licks then took the stage and were pretty much the opposite of the opening band: completely live and interactive, experienced, non-techno as you can get, and playing anything and everything but new skool R&B. Not exactly smooth programming but, hey, live and learn.
Fungus Licks is centred around Matt Collins on piano with Matt Nolan on drums and Tom Skailes on saxes and harmonica. Pete Bradley (from Dudlow Joe) is a regularly appearing guest singer. Matt Collins is a terrific piano player whose basic style is boogie but modifies and extends it into other areas, notably into a melange of Balkan/Eastern European folk tunes. They began their set with a Khazakstani Wedding song, followed by a boogie version of Swanee River, then the Muppet song, then a mambo, then Pete came up and sang a house-levelling torch version of Aint Nobody's Business, then... got the idea?
Two things unify this crazy patchwork of tunes: the band's strong current of humour and intelligence, and the unique way they play (and sing). Matt Nolan has a sound like no other drummer: slack-ish tuning, slightly behind the beat, lots of cymbals (well, he makes them for famous people, so it's all falling into place now...). Tom plays sax in a manner that retains that Eastern European/prewar jazz sound, yet is not a duplication. It is jazz but not jazz, and it works perfectly. His harmonica playing is blues (think Charlie Musselwhite) all the way, and it's great. Pete is a Bath treasure and one of the most unique singers you will ever hear. He stands comfortably in the long line of male female singers like Smokey Robinson or Chet Baker, more jazzy than Smokey, more bluesy than Chet.
The crowd wouldn't let Fungus Licks stop; they played 16 songs, ending with Ray Charles' What'd I Say with people still dancing in the lobby.
Charley Dunlap
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