15 February 2014 (gig)
18 February 2014
Stop Stop Start Again! The biggest, baddest, bunch of ribald rockers that Belfast currently has to offer took their noisome fayre to the nation’s capital for the first time and promptly blew the old town down.
The purveyors of a curious punk/glam confection rolled up at the Pavilion in the east end’s Brick Lane and shook the room to its foundations.
With guitar licks hotter than a sex-starved Kylie after a vindaloo in one of the nearby curry houses coupled with lyrics as raunchy as any Rihanna dystopian ditty, London had seen little like it since the Dolls last rocked up.
Despite the fact that lead singer Paul Rowan sometimes struggled like a Saturday drunk at his front door to find the right key, few of the sizable crowd seemed to notice or care as a crescendo of applause grew with the end of each ear-splitting number.
The set kicked off eponymous ‘Stop Stop Start Again’ with its chopping, staccato opening chords leaving some punters perplexed before exploding into a three-bar riot that soon had toes-a-tapping and heads nodding.
Next up was Better Days – one of the band’s more pedestrian offerings – before fans’ favourite ‘Banging on your Back Door’ with lyrics that leave only a little to the imagination.
Other songs were a nod to the pleasures to be enjoyed when dressed in rubber or leather and the phallic properties of a large hard-on collider.
An inspired cover choice was Cher’s ‘Believe’ a song that every clubbing queen has in their record collection and seemingly not an immediate fit for this outfit. But mixed with a Pistol’s riff and plea to ‘believe in a life after punk’ it was just perfect.
With these and others the Belfast rockers delivered a plastic (or rubber) bullet straight to the diseased heart of the sanctimonious and self-effacing singer/songwriters of today.
Facebook the fuckers and make sure you catch them next time they explode on this side of the pond
