Post Punk Fellini Expressionist Wonder

Neil Jones on The Voices at Cardiff's Clwb Ifor Bach

28th June, 2007

Ideally of course it would have been a night when the sun shone from the sky to make the ground shimmer, but a drizzly, dark Cardiff is lit solely by the epically manicured indie and punk kids awaiting Thursday’s downstairs Clwb night in the street and Wetherspoons.

Talk of film and music, Jarvis, Scott Walker and of coarse Russian Constructuralism worries the brain and Twisted by Design at The City Arms makes us feel alive before the action heats up, and there’s a certain buzz when entering the upstairs realm of Clwb, a buzz that goes beyond industry naysay.

I soon get the impression that most of the people here have seen The Voices before, their demeanours loosely etched with an excitement and anticipation that’s catching. New speakers have been glued to the walls to back up the normal PA, and as the band fire into the first song proper they creak under the strain. A guitarist, a bass player, and a keyboardist who also sees to drums and vocals pour out a concise barrage of sounds that ache and pulse with impressionist wonder, a little like what a post-punk soundtrack to Fellini’s La Strada would have sounded like; visceral, propulsive, enchanting and poetic.

From the off-set they hit it right, Chris’s guitar fluttering like butterflies dropping atom bombs into the sea, Clare’s keyboards and drums adding flourishes of dreamy wonder to the emotional assault, her light, layered vocals more poignant, whispered suggestions than chants of nihilistic disdain, and a third of the immense charm is that the The Voices, cut-glass intense and fantastically drilled as they are, still look like they’re enjoying it and are willing to fuck it up at any time.

Post-punk for me is a genre that has rarely fulfilled its promise, too many pretenders and not enough humble enigmas, too many lifestyle dark lords, not enough poets, but The Voices render it with a Pop shimmer that makes the veins pulse with summer rain. Tonight, it’s enough to do to keep my feet on the ground, and on the short walk home, I somehow feel I might be glowing.

© 2007 Neil Jones

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