LIVE // MUSIC // The Desertfest Tour (Fatso Jetson + All Souls w/ support from Old Man Lizard)

January 27th 2018

Rebellion, Manchester

Fatso Jetson are one of the seminal bands of the ‘desert rock’ movement*, a subgenre I have a great personal affinity for, and so it is with real pleasure that I attend tonight’s gig - only a month after seeing Yawning Man at Manchester’s (awfully named) Soup Kitchen! - as part of the Desertfest Tour. Rebellion is a great venue for a band like FJ who came up playing in bars and at parties; small enough to be intimate, but with a powerful PA and a sound engineer who knows how to get the best results out of it. As a venue, it tends to cater to metal bands, so it’s a treat to get to enjoy FJ’s distinctive blending of punk, surf and blues on a sound system which obviously has the power to back it up properly.

Tonight’s support are Old Man Lizard, contenders for the coveted title of Suffolk’s Heaviest Band. A three piece who thrash out some top-shelf stoner metal with a sense of humour, OML really impress and have landed themselves squarely on my radar. Vocalist/guitarist Jack Newnham has a voice reminiscent of Baroness’ John Baizley and a guitar tone that, through tonight’s PA at least, sounds as though it could split open stone. Thick, droning riffs give way to nimble, slightly proggy excursions (such as on King Clone, one of their standout tracks from tonight’s set). The band are aided by an affable, bantering onstage presence and occasional tongue in cheek lyrics (one of their tracks is simply Newnham howling the repeated lines ‘oh yeah, it’s a lovely day’ and ‘take it easy’ over some skull-rattling sludge riffs), and pretty much everyone in the crowd is headbanging by the end of their final track.

Sharing top billing with FJ on this tour are All Souls, a new band continuing the communal desert rock spirit, sharing members with several established outfits (Tony Tornay is on double duty tonight, drumming for both FJ and this band, and the rest of All Souls are made up of members of groups such as Black Elk and Alma Sangre). Their polished, straightforward melodies and bursts of distorted riffing combine for a sound akin to a hybrid of early QOTSA and Pixies, with a dash of noise in Antonio Aguilar’s riotous lead guitar style; he scratches the strings, goes at the fretboard with a slide in the same manner one might use in attempting to wrestle a poisonous snake, and peppers his soloing with the odd bit of Gregg Ginn-esque atonal note stabbing. Erik Trammell provides muscular, power chord-driven rhythm guitar with some pleasing hardcore punk leanings, and vocalist/bassist Meg Castellanos provides a solid, unflashy rhythmic backbone along with Tornay.

All Souls are airtight, if a little lacking in innovation. The set has some really groovy moments, they know their way around an instantly catchy chorus, and I have fun watching them; but overall they perhaps suffer from drawing a little too much obvious influence from the bands who themselves were inspired by desert rock leaders like FJ. It’s not enough to sink what is a very solid performance, but there are several points in their set where I feel the ghost of déjà vu. Hopefully as they continue to play together and release more stuff they’ll use their undeniable skills as musicians to create a more distinctive sound (the self-titled debut album is out on 9th February, and I should mention as a disclaimer that I am yet to listen to how they sound on any of their studio recordings).

Honestly though, I’m really here for the Jetson, and they don’t disappoint. Despite the frequent complexity of their songs, they retain a sense of jam-oriented looseness throughout, which is perhaps unsurprising considering both their consummate technical skill, and the powerful chemistry that builds between band members when they’ve been playing music together for decades. They quite simply make this stuff look easy. Highlights include ‘Royal Family’ (which is gifted with one of my personal favourite FJ riffs, and gets the crowd swinging like robots to the slightly off-kilter rhythm); ‘Bored Stiff’ (another favourite riff and one of FJ’s most triumphant singalong choruses) and ‘Magma’ (the stoned lurch of which sounds absolutely huge live).

*Kicked off by Yawning Man (a band which, like FJ, was co-formed by Mario Lalli and also currently features his son Dino), ‘desert rock’ became a term used to group together the collective of musicians - mostly hailing from the Palm Springs desert - that gave birth to the legendary Desert Sessions series as well as several hugely influential bands, including Kyuss and, eventually, QOTSA.