Gulp… Love of the game

Live Review: Gulp & Francobollo at Heavenly Social

Published on February 13th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

What a stupidly gifted and industrious bunch Super Furry Animals are. They may not be currently operating as the magnificent five-headed beast that delivered nine uniformly stupendous studio albums between 1996 and 2009, but that just means we get Gruff Rhys and Cian Ciarán releasing gorgeous solo efforts, a new Neon Neon LP on the way, Daffyd Ieuan rocking folks’ balls off with The Peth, Huw ‘Bunf’ Bunford disappearing into the shadows to record found sounds and (fingers crossed) an album’s worth of his own songs…

…and bassist Guto Pryce, ever the ‘quiet one’ on account of his being the only member not to chip in vocally, has emerged alongside Scottish singer Lindsey Leven as Gulp, dealing in lush, sultry electro-pop such as the following…

Off we popped to the ace Heavenly Social venue in central London to watch them headline a Huw Stephens Present night, and we were downstairs with a drink in time to catch Swedish four-piece Francobollo working their crowd into a lather with electrifying performances of such awesome, wonky odd-rock as the following sun-smooched belter…

Had there been an entrance fee then Francobollo could have justified it on their own, but then of course we had the unassuming Pryce and Leven taking to the stage with their band to delight us all over again, albeit in a very different way. The former’s two most distinctive settings – namely the melodically probing bass lines of SFA’s earlier work, and the sophisticated, reverby ‘plinks’ on their more recent output – were both integrated alongside some Motorik and funky turns as the soundscapes wrapped around Leven’s bewitching vocals added new layers of intrigue with each passing number.

Gloopy electronics, hypnotically popping ‘n’ clicking digi-beats, darkly luxurious melodies: if this sounds like your kind of thing then Rocksucker implores you to gobble up any resultant album with a hearty Gulp. It’s to be hoped that the world takes notice of how gosh darn lovely this stuff is, because it would be at once heartwarming and vindicating to see Gulp drawing rings around it.

Two splendid acts + no entrance fee = five quails in anyone’s book.

Rocksucker says: Five Quails out of Five!

a quail a quail a quail a quail a quail

For more information, please visit gulpgulp.co.uk and www.francobollomusic.com

Click here to read Rocksucker’s interview with Gulp from last June

Artists: francobollo, gulp, super furry animals

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.