Ernest, Unspeakable Easels, Dear Thief - DeBees 29th Nov 07

Last Updated on Sunday, 09 December 2007 15:50 Written by Ken Foster

This is wild! This is fantastic! The perfect Christmas gift!. A searing, inspiring, exotically chaotic way of achieving the almost impossible and restoring rock music to something that will surprise you… It is sublime, depressing, uplifting, hopeless in equal measures. It is despair and frustration, it is anger boiling over. This night points to a future somewhere, somewhere beyond revolution and post anarchy.

This was a place to be. A hopeless mismanaged place with no sound engineer and no direction. It was in the middle of nowhere where magic can happen... so you can take your trite namedropping Jo Whiley dross and your hyped up NME nee Smash Hits and your Zany Zane Lowe and begin to make your own mind up. Yes use myspace, yes use the other myriad sites and search for something interesting. You can even download it for free but for f**ck's sake don't take any notice of the playlists. Go out and shout about what you have found, rebel against pseudo reality tv and mtv and x factor. Remember punk? well now it's your turn to make a difference.

Ernest play with a passion not seen since Ian Curtis's twisted fractious cavorting wonderment. They play as if their lives depend on each performance. They recently played to record labels in Japan and were told that their performances were amazing. "However, we are waiting for the buzz from London". So you heard it here first, you don't need to be an amazing band anymore, you just need some 'London Buzz'.  So put your guitars away, rustle up £15,000 and you're away. (although even this route didn't do Towers of London much good). Ernest have an album recorded that may be one of the best albums you'll never hear. It is frozen in time and you'll probably have more chance of stealing Walt Disney's head than you'll ever have of hearing it. Why?, because that's how life works sometimes. Tracks like Glamour, Crash Tested and Sweet Inspirations heard only by those lucky enough to see Ernest whilst they existed. Ernest played for you, not themselves or the industry...but it doesn't work if you don't play the game does it? Who has managed it.. maybe The Fall.. even Radiohead to a certain extent. but they'd be kidding themselves to forget their compromises. Ernest's first chapter may be over but they have left a legacy that will become a role model for non-conformity and when Terry Dunne smashed his guitar into the drums at the end he was smashing a thousand good and bad memories into a split second.

Unspeakable Easels tell us about Phrenology, the shape and protuberances of the skull, based on the now discredited theory of the Austrian physician Franz Josef Gall that such features revealed measurable psychological and intellectual traits. A subtle hint maybe that the Easels demand attention and study.They deliver complex masterworks of sound with machine gunned verbal soundbites chosen to challenge the listener. Catch a line, think.....you may miss another 6, catch another.. link it to the first and begin to make sense of it. Unspeakable Easels are monumental. They will create the musical equivalent of the Frankenstein monster. It will be a slightly flawed work of genius that will amaze and at the same time disturb you.

Dear Thief had to follow the chaos and kaleidescope of emotions that had gone before. A back to basics 3 piece is a misnomer. I don't know if they reference any influences but The Fall and Captain Beefheart came into my head and if you have to have influences what better than these two?

Through Capital, Mona Lisa and Freitag, Dear Thief gave the night a sublime ending.

This gig was a shambles, it was chaotically magnificent and yet it left one with a hopeless desperation.
Where are the substantial minority that were galvanised by John Peel? Now more than ever independent music needs a talisman.