By Megan Foulk, Co-Deputy Music Editor
Couldn’t get tickets for Oasis? FEET have got you covered. Rediscover the adidas windbreaker hidden inside your wardrobe, Britpop is back, and haircuts are included.
Descending into the belly of Thekla on Friday night was like falling down a time-transcending rabbit hole and re-emerging in 1996 - at least as I would imagine it. Saul Kane, front man of Leeds-born, L’Objectif, was swinging from his mic stand flaunting his Albarn-esque barnet and the dense but sparkly guitar music that reverberated off the stage gave the room the kind of heady atmosphere one would encounter at an overly extravagant high school prom.
Welcome relief after Bristol-based band, Mould, offered a disappointing start to the evening (my earplug wearing neighbours in the crowd informed me), L’Objectif were the perfect teaser for the superbly crunchy show that followed.
Lead single from their EP, Left Hand Side, released in March, ‘The Dance You Sell’ felt as though it had been pulled straight from the soundtrack of a 90s romcom. Raw and reflective on entry before suddenly launching into a thick chorus with warm vocal harmonies, the track is the kind to get lost in under the dappled light of a disco ball.
Short-lived though, the Leeds four-piece soon made room for the main event - the band NME dubbed ‘the next generation’s wonky Britpop’ - FEET.
Formed inside the walls of Coventry university in 2019, FEET are quintessentially English in sound. Topping crashing guitars with twinkly tambourine, frontman George Haverson’s mod haircut and baby-tee combo wouldn’t make him out of place in an early-era Queen tribute band. Now, five years since their debut, What’s Inside Is More Than Just Ham, new album Make It Up demonstrates the uninhibited fun FEET put at the forefront of their music making.
Joined on stage by silver party balloon letters spelling ‘FEET’, with a comically placed backwards ‘F’, it wasn’t until a couple of songs in that I also noticed the prop of a vintage box TV. Fizzing in permanent multicoloured static, the stage accessory felt like a quiet dismissal of today’s digital world, as if to say: ‘why are you waiting for the TV to work? Watch what’s happening right in front of you.’
Equally a meta-reminder of 'Top of the Pops' and the theatricality of live performance, the retro references - TV, haircuts and chin-zipped fluorescent windbreakers – felt like a collective rejection of the music industry today.
A sentiment shared in single ‘Peace & Quiet’, from 2021 EP Walking Machine, digs at ‘lazy journalism’, ‘corporate ass kissing’ and ‘closing down venues’ demonstrate FEET's general distaste towards the superficiality of the music industry. Paired with the tongue-in-cheek and self-referential ‘punk is just a haircut; it doesn’t have a meaning’, the band's glorification and rejection of particular cultural references throws stereotypes up into the air in favour of having a good time.
Unbothered by the pigeon-holing nature of genre, Haverson commented in an interview with The Line of Best Fit, “I think the whole ‘Crease Pop’ sound is that any five kids who’ve been learning guitar for about two months should be able to play our songs. That’s the approach I want for our music."
Ringing true on stage, throwing their own little party in the bowels of one of Bristol’s most-loved venues, FEET's closing song ‘Goodbye (So Long Farewell)' perfectly encompassed their ethos as a band. As the crowd waved enthusiastically, like primary school children saying farewell to a B-list local celebrity in a school assembly, the light-heartedness of it all couldn’t help but make you smile.
Bringing back Britpop with all of the fun and none of the drama, perhaps we should leave Oasis in the 90s and let the new kids have a go.
Featured Image: Megan FoulkAre you team Oasis or Blur?
