Happy Gamblers
The Joy Vegas operate out of Liverpool and today have made the short journey down the M62 to play at this years In The City showcase at Dry Bar. They are fortunate to have the benefit of playing on the largest stage, which generally makes for a bigger crowd as it's positioned right next to the door to catch punters as they drift in.
Based around the classic line up of drums bass, guitar & vocals they deliver a set of fast indie with regular injections of dirty rock. Alex Wright's drums sound great and Will Rowe's guitar work is solid but unfortunately is often lacking definition in the mix. Their Norwegian front man Mats Devik throws lots of classic poses into his performance, part Ian Brown, part Liam Gallagher he pulls it off by & large and has a decent voice to go with it.
There are a few big choruses, which coupled with a tight performance make for a solid showing but considering the energy of the songs it's not the most engaging performance with little movement on stage. Unfortunately neither the song titles nor the name of the band are clear when announced and at somewhere like ITC, where you're often playing to people who haven't heard you before that's a mistake but I suspect they've done enough today to make people go & find out for themselves.