13. Hard Fi

THE FORUM

23 SEPTEMBER 2011

Let’s be honest, when the standout moment of your gig night is the steak, you had beforehand, you’re in trouble. But full credit where it’s due, Kentish Kitchen absolutely delivered. A medium-rare morsel, washed down with a criminally good bottle of red, and for a brief, glorious hour, my friend “M” and I were living our best lives.

Now, I thought we had made a solid choice here, I’d enjoyed their new album, so I figured we’d be in for a night of gritty indie anthems, and some melodic alt-rock all carried aloft on the wings of Jack Daniels. But alas, from the moment we stepped in, things started spiralling downhill faster than you can say “what soundcheck?”

The Forum can be audio roulette, sometimes you hit the sweet spot, and sometimes it sounds like the band are performing inside a cement mixer. Tonight, we lost. The vocals were so deep in the mix, they seemed to be calling to us from the Earth’s mantle. At one point I half-expected a dwarf with a pickaxe to climb on stage and declare he’d finally found them.

And then there was the staging. Now, I’m not saying every band must pull out laser shows and flaming drum kits, but a white sheet with the band’s logo had all the creative pizzazz of a primary school science fair. I had seen better pub quiz signs. It all got a bit tedious as every song melted into the next in a kind of sonic fondue. In the end, it was a shame, really. The band was giving it their all up there, clearly hoping to deliver, and they deserved better. Come on, Forum! Step up the sound game or at least hand out lyric sheets at the door.