OPUS KINK + LEMONSUCKR + KITCHEN LOVER – CONCORDE 2 TERRACE, BRIGHTON 6.8.26
Brighton is a city of not only great pubs but great smoking areas: from the “courtyard” of The Hope & Ruin to the long benches of Green Door Store. As temperatures rise toward the planet’s protracted heat death, these smoking areas are valuable tools for sobering up and saving the pits of your T-shirts from sweat stains. Increasingly, music is spilling into these spaces, from Concorde 2’s longstanding summer DJ sets to Green Door Store’s first Lime Garden party back in April. Firmly outside for the summer, brass-punk panic attackers Opus Kink launch their debut album ‘The Sweet Goodbye’ in Concorde 2’s smoking area.
With muscle memory of hammered club nights, where many reach for their rollies, Kitchen Lover are not only the first band on but also the first to join the crowd in an unofficial celebration of cigarettes.
Gripping immediately with the garage punk boom of ‘Undercover Bagel Lover’, Kitchen Lover’s ethos is fast and loud, barrelling through the CBGB-via-Jim-Morrison wallop of ‘Shakari’ to the stabbing downstrokes of ‘Monkey Down.’ “We have a lot of songs named after animals,” admits frontman Lars Baker, before an ode to ugly feet in the polyrhythmic splatter of ‘Pig Feet’ keeps the crowd on its toes.
Intent on smashing through as many tracks as possible – acknowledging this with “We’re gonna play three really short ones in a row” – Kitchen Lover’s pace is blisteringly filthy, with their frontman engaging in the kind of rambling you’d expect to see on a Friday night on The Level. Despite this, ‘Medic’ sees Lars engage in faux-American sprechgesang for a tale of Royal Tunbridge Wells, jumping into the crowd to pinball between patrons. The closing track, ‘Me Dog, You Dog, We Dog’, lands close to the ska-punk stylings of Bad Brains, as Lars and bassist Edson Chillery jog on the spot together. While Kitchen Lover’s bawdy madhousery may not have got the crowd jumping in the way they want, it has warmed them up for a night of hysteria.
Kitchen Lover:
Lars Larsen Baker – vocals, guitar
Edson Chillery – bass
George Weller – drums
Hayden Spudlow – guitar
Kitchen Lover setlist:
‘Undercover Bagel Lover’
‘Shakari’
‘Monkey Down’
‘Pig Feet’
‘Red Coat’
‘There Goes My Brains’
‘Marigold’
‘Gasoline’
‘El Toad Johnson’
‘Medic’
‘Me Dog, You Dog, We Dog’
Kitchen Lover loosened up a stiff crowd; Lemonsuckr are primed to fire the terrace into the territory Opus Kink expects. After a false start caused by drummer Matt Saunders arriving five minutes early, Guy Ferris’s eventual greeting of “Howdy Hello” fills the smoking area.
Opening with the synth-sounding thump of ‘Sedated’, heads start bouncing, and people start pogoing – with no synths to be seen, the pedalboard setup impressively mimics Roland synths for a nu-rave sound. Operating somewhere between Just Jack and Adult DVD, ‘Werk’ sprints with restless hi-hats while ‘Stain’ slices with sharp arpeggios bordering on estranged punk.
Breaking the barrier between audience and band again, Guy Ferris continuously gets amongst the people – seemingly taunting them during the cheeky ‘Grandaddy.’ The energy doesn’t relent for one second, with closer ‘Rugrat’ twitching and pulsating between cowbell hits and shouted vocals as the movement in the crowd promises frenzy for Opus Kink’s headline.
Lemonsuckr:
Guy Ferris – vocals
Oscar Post – guitar
Ollie Thomas – guitar
Matt Saunders – drums
Jake Andrews – bass
Lemonsuckr setlist:
‘Sedated’
‘Instant Kinks’
‘Werk’
‘Stain’
‘House On Fire’
‘Grandaddy’
‘H.E.A.T’
‘Rugrat’
Adorned in a cowboy hat and dungarees, frontman Angus Rogers manages to scrounge a cigarette from a packed-out audience on the terrace. Five minutes later, ‘La Asereje (Ketchup Song)’ blares from the speaker, as Rogers vamps for singalongs and gets them. Opening with the sleazy hypnosis of ‘Come Over Do Me Wrong’, moshpits open and chaos ensues from a crowd whipped into a frenzy by the supporters. ‘I Love You, Baby’ loops with bass and guitar, with horns bursting through the mesmerism; something in this song induces dance fever.
“F*cking hit it,” Rogers announces as the punched-up mariachi-shanty of ‘Dust’ has the audience spellbound in a way most artists only get for their final song, before the yelped melodrama of ‘I Wanna Live With You’ provides a mild breather amongst the mania. By now, it appears that nicotine alone can’t explain Rogers’ antics.
‘The Sweet Goodbye’ has a launchpad sound effect somewhere between a monk and a fairground, lending menace to a somewhat pedestrian-paced track before a breakdown, and a shout of “Long live the Soviet Union” opens up yet another circle. There’s an intangible sense of infection, with the horns and motorik beats casting a spell, forcing people to hurl themselves at each other. With another breakdown before a protracted conclusion stoking mosh-pits on the chanted ‘I Have To Shine My Sunday Shoes’, there’s a risk of the band being formulaic in spite of the drunken raptures of a Concorde 2 terrace. However, Rogers’ truly unpredictable antics, constant demands for cigarettes and detours into crowd work – one sheepish member is singled out for looking like the dearly departed Glen Hansard – keep things fresh enough. The descending space-age slow-burn of ‘Malarkey’ allows a moment of brooding, and a chance for everyone to catch their breath again.
With near-folkloric existential dread in ‘Will It Come For You?’, the menacing undercurrent to the bedlam is exposed. The unease is exacerbated by the story of the last witch executed before ‘The Head Tree.’ The track slowly builds before unleashing another round of pent-up pandemonium across an already fiery smoking area. There is nowhere to go but up, as ‘I’m A Pretty Showboy’ is unrelenting, horns bursting through an interlocked rhythm section as circles ripple before Rogers has even spat out “I’m Living A Lie.” A protracted conclusion sees Rogers create a path in the crowd, be walked round on someone’s shoulders, occasionally spouting nonsense like Elvis on speed or interpolating the likes of ‘Build Me Up Buttercup.’
“F*ck Nick Cave,” Rogers teases, “I’m the man” before a teaser of a deeply discordant ‘Waltzing Matilda’ builds straight into the spellbinding piano loop of ‘St Paul Of The Tarantulas.’ Between bouts of crowd surfing, Rogers barks militarily alongside a kick-driven rhythm from Fin Abbo you can feel in your ribs long before the elbows of the ever-growing circle-pits. With Jed Morgan crowdsurfing with his saxophone, doubling his insurance premium in real time, there’s a real sense of concluding on a high for the album launch show.
Bizarrely, Opus Kink seem determined not to end on a high – even singing a snippet of ‘Edelweiss’ a cappella before deep cut ‘1:18’ gets a rare outing. ‘Crucify!’ is more of a left-field turn, with syncopated drums bordering on punk-via-afrobeats, more of a dancer than a jumper for a crowd subjected to multiple opportunities for a big finish. While the closer ‘Oh, Irony’ offers a tongue-in-cheek, lighters-in-the-air moment showcasing depth beyond their usual destruction, the mood is lost. A few devotees muster up the “la da da” singalongs, but the further back in the crowd, the more the smoking-area codshit conversations take over. It somewhat sullies a celebration of the circle-pit-stoking delirium that has made Opus Kink one of Brighton’s best breakouts.
Opus Kink:
Angus Rogers – vocals, guitar
Sam Abbo – bass, backing vocals
Fin Abbo – drums
Jazz Pope – keys
Jed Morgan – saxophone
Jack Banjo Courtney – trumpet
Opus Kink setlist:
‘Come Over Do Me Wrong’
‘I Love You, Baby’
‘Dust’
‘I Wanna Live With You’
‘The Sweet Goodbye’
‘I Have To Shine My Sunday Shoes’
‘Malarkey’
‘Will It Come For You?’
‘The Head Tree’
‘I’m A Pretty Showboy’
‘St Paul Of The Tarantulas’
‘1:18’
‘Crucify!’
‘Oh, Irony’
