With the recent release of their second album ‘The Great Escape’, The Rifles are on tour in the U.K. and Europe. Sonic Mouth caught them on stage at the stylish Camden Roundhouse...
Another night, another gig. Whatever stamina supplements the Chingford four-piece are putting in their tea it wouldn’t go amiss on the NHS. If the country were ran like this band tour then the throes of a bourgeois revolution would be on our hands. The bureaucrats would be obliterated. Trains and buses would always run on time. As for waiting lists and queues? Well they would be as rare as buying a CD from a record store.
Consistency has certainly bred class for The Rifles who unloaded a solid show onto a savage audience at The Roundhouse. The jaunty garage rock act sound very much like a contemporary incarnation of The Jam mixed with the earthy sound of early Oasis. The jangly guitars from lead singer Joel Stoker and lead guitarist Lucus Crowther combined with the succinct snarling rhythm section had the audience hooked.
It wasn’t a classic crowd nor a sell out, but their well-honed showmanship transmitted from the off when epic opener ‘Science in Violence’ kick started proceedings. It was less of a case of ‘we are the mods’ and more ‘we are the mob’ from those in attendance. Lung-busting moshing, crowd surfing and this humble scribe going home covered in other people’s blood may sound like a good old fashioned night out. However it all felt a little flat, the usual camaraderie between folk at a Rifles gig must have evaporated with the steam of sweat filling the venue.
The acerbic atmosphere didn’t detract from the band’s performance who, led by iconic front man Stoker, undoubtedly flourish better on stage than in the studio. Singing in a similar style to The Kinks’ Ray Davies but with an eerie hint of Dennis Waterman (yes, the ginger bloke from The Sweeney), Stoker’s cockney twanged vocals were full of punch and flowed effortlessly over the band’s tight arrangements.
With a sound that is quintessentially English, the quartet delivered a charming repertoire of energetic anthems such as ‘Romeo and Julie’ and ‘The Great Escape’ and heartfelt acoustic adventures like the superb, ‘Narrow Minded Social Club.’
If you haven’t seen The Rifles you may wonder a couple of things. For starters are they original? No way. Are they experimental? Not really. They're certainly not visionaries. Then again they don't intend to be. The experience they give you is wrapped up in mod rock nostalgia, and to their credit they execute it with edgy electricity.
Ultimately they look destined for cult status. Loved by Paul Weller but relatively unknown in the public eye, if they emerged on the music scene during the Britpop phenomena of the mid 1990s, the bigwigs at the NME et al would surely have championed them to the upper echelons of mainstream affection. Johnny Cash sang in his signature song ‘Man in Black’ about the ‘victim of the times’; well that sums up The Rifles. To many they may be lost in translation, but on the night the East Londoners were worth every penny of the admission price.
www.myspace.com/therifles
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