It was a night of musical punctuations, with two of the three acts on offer having an exclamation mark in their names. Such a device is usually used to indicate excitement, and there was plenty of that on offer in the Hope & Anchor’s legendary basement.
Be N!ce offer an agreeable line in rambunctious punk that demands and receives lot of audience interaction, with much moshing off stage and plenty of encouragement to do so on stage.
Fronted by affable whirling dervish Pol, whose cheerful aggression brought to mind another ‘Poly’ (the late great Ms. Styrene), and backed up solidly by guitarist Brett’s buzzsaw shredding and the tough rhythm section of Emily on bass and Alex on drums, Be N!ce rattled through a 13 song set that included all six of the inclusions on the Where Am I EP in no time at all, earning themselves a deserved and welcome encore with a 14th song cover of The Chats’ ‘Smoko’ that sent the audience into overdrive and left the band with nowhere to go but over to the merch stall, where an impressive queue formed as soon the set finished.
With a lengthy set such as that it’s impossible to talk about every song in detail – but highlights? Yes, there were plenty of those. Their opening number, the savage and well deserved diatribe against the so-called 47th president’s vision of America ‘Get A Job’, a surprisingly funky ‘Bedtime’ and the unnerving set (and EP) closer ‘Cambridge’ all displayed lyrical content that shows there is a surprisingly darkness hidden behind their immense wall of sound. These are just three songs in a set that in many ways was really just one long highlight.
Pol talks a lot of their lyrics, which cut through the sonic maelstrom and hit home hard. If you have ever held an office job that has drained you of the will to live you will easily identify with Pol lamenting in ‘Cambridge’ that they are
“Gonna kill myself over Microsoft Teams/Leave the camera on so everyone sees”.
Roughly halfway through the set, bassist Emily swapped places with Pol for a coruscating and personal ‘Dyslexic Hell’, screaming its pointed message for all she was worth and managing to stir up a bit of audience participation – a fairly frequent occurrence across the night.
On that subject, Pol was on and off the stage all through the set, whipping up a whole lot of moshing among those at the front who numbered a lot of Be N!ce t-shirt wearers among them – a sure sign that the group already has a firm fan base that would have undoubtedly swelled in number following their 40-odd minutes of unbridled, vivacious 21st century punk.
The increasingly meteoric ascent of Thwack! was given a further boost by another immaculate set from this highly original and endearingly quirky quintet, currently operating mostly as a quartet while their violin player recovers from surgery.
Charlie and Chlo’ are an impossible-to-ignore frontline, with Blake laying into their drums for all they are worth, and Mal (and, when she is better, Natalia) giving Thwack! something that no other band of the moment can offer – a string section, comprised of violin and viola.
https://link.dice.fm/W2a31b5f201eThe band had a busy 2024 and released a handful of singles now, with set highlight ‘Three Angels’ dropping just last week, and they are playing a number of gigs over the next m few weeks in support said single including LOUD WOMEN International Women’s Day Sunday matinee show at Brixton’s Windmill on 9 March. If you haven’t immersed yourself in the full-on Thwack! experience to date, I suggest you buy a ticket now before bigger venues beckon, as they inevitably will.
The Where Am I EP is out now. Buy it from Bandcamp or direct from the band at gigs.