Review: The Floors, New Nausea and Grunge Barbie at Mojos

The Floors, New Nausea and Grunge Barbie at Mojos
Friday, August 11, 2023

It was Friday and we had Friday on our mind. And how sweet it was to be able to roll into Mojos and dive into a veritable gumbo of musical styles and attitudes overseen by the inimitable Bee Rizzi on the decks and the opening clash n’ clang of Grunge Barbie.

They used the word hybrid often when describing their oeuvre and it does stick. Not quite punk, not quite hip hop, not quite grunge yet also all of them both separately and together, Grunge Barbie lit up that dark stage with tension and intensity. Shinead Ruby’s vocals are alluring doctrines that hit between spoken rap and punk snarl. Keira Alice Owen (New Talk) offers up passionate backing vocals and her walking basslines complement/complicate drummer Germaine Jones’ on-point beats. Grunge Barbie supported Sleaford Mods on one occasion and clearly the headliners were in very good company indeed.

New Nausea have many if not all of the feels. Singer/guitarist Albert Pritchard rocked a tasteful beanie and Body Type t-shirt combo and elicited affability when he wasn’t summoning something somewhere between Liddiard and Salmon. There’s a lovely uplifting soulfulness about New Nausea’s alt-country leanings, but the band also has echoes of Television (the band, not the appliance) and make plenty of room for the louds the quiets and the moments to riot.

Special mention should go to drummer GUM aka Jay Watson (Pond, Tame Impala) who filled in with razor-sharp fills. Pritchard, meanwhile, graciously stepped aside from his microphone when the duty manager jumped onstage and stopped proceedings to kick out a couple at the bar (fortunately no one’s parents were called). He then proceeded to give away copies of the band’s Fountain Of Struth album. ‘It seems insulting to sell them!’ he yelled as he handed out the CDs. Told you he was affable.

The metal liquid pump that is the sound of The Floors soon filled the room and it was very welcome as it’s all too rare that they get up off the ground. The guitar and bass wielding Luke and Ryan Dux are brothers who have been playing music together all their lives, while Ashley Doodkorte is a drummer who has been around for half of that and has mastered their language. He’s also a member of Voyager which makes him possibly the only drummer to have performed at both Eurovision and Mojos this calendar year.

That familiar Floors mélange followed: where just when you think it’s something, it’s something else. It’s a land where Tom Waits for no one, just drink up and let it happen to you.

With his hair slowly crawling back over his face and flossing his front teeth, Luke Dux commanded the lowest slung Gibson SG in the recorded history of guitar slungness. Some audience members mistake The Floors arch musical assault and blues-metal-dirges for aggression and act that out, but this evening’s audience understood it and simply reveled. We got some meat and potatoes and possibly some mushrooms and were more than willing to risk it.

BOB GORDON

Photos by Bob Gordon