Pictures at an Exhibition
Smith 6079 have been around for a few years now but haven’t really made much of an impact, which is probably demonstrated by the small crowd gathered to watch them in the main room at Jabez Clegg. Doing a bit of research beforehand I find one review stating that they are reminiscent of early Sex Pistols, sounds good and I’m looking forward to seeing if they live up to such a claim.
With most of the band looking like they reside on the other side of 30 it’s no surprise that they come over as a tight and professional unit, after they’ve spent most of the first song sorting out awful sound problems that is. The opening couple of numbers aren’t bad, fairly upbeat with a bit of a vibe behind them, shades of Jane’s Addiction in places perhaps? Singer Moon has a touch of Ian MacKaye about him as well, which is no bad thing. The problem however is that none of the songs ever get above jogging pace and as such fail to really get going or have any impact. Moon does his best to leer towards the crowd but that aside there’s nothing much going on up on stage to fire up the performance.
Now and again they produce a big chorus and they’re all the better for it but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s all mid paced or slow and just not very interesting. The Pistols reference seems completely bizarre by this point! If they gave the set more dynamics, mixed it up with some faster songs then they could have something but today they leave me and most of the others in attendance fairly cold.