Psychedelic Porn Crumpets live at NUSU review – rapid-fire riffs hit like a drug

Kick-starting their umpteenth UK tour, the Crumpets are very much a well-buttered machine these days. A strong ninth album has only bolstered their set list of precision-tooled riffs and prog rock neck-breakers. NUSU’s paltry sound system simply couldn’t keep up.

You can tell how well a Psychedelic Porn Crumpets gig is going by how many twenty-something men in the audience have done away with their t-shirts. The crowd in NUSU seems to start tonight’s gig fully clothed, but after a few songs I count five lads who have stripped off. An hour later, there’s at least a dozen half-naked bodies bouncing around the mosh pit, their backs slippery with sweat every time they inevitably come into a collision course with me (my newly purchased Psychedelic Porn Crumpets t-shirt very much still donned, rest assured). At one point between songs I realise I’m standing on someone else’s discarded top. I hold it aloft and, when no claimants are forthcoming, lob it backwards away from the mosh pit. It will find it’s owner eventually, albeit scuffed up from being pounded by the feet of a small army ecstatic psych rock fans.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have no doubt seen all this hundreds of times before. Now nine-albums deep, the Crumpets are an old fashioned indie band, happily cruising just beyond the mainstream, with a dedicated enough fanbase to fill out 500-cap venues in Newcastle every year or two (the band are from Perth, Australia) but no more. Mop-haired Jack McEwan begins tonight by telling us Newcastle is “like a second home” for the band, and his vintage Newcastle United shirt and interest in the Champions League score makes his claim seem more credible than it might have otherwise been. I last saw him perform in a dingy working men’s club in North Shields last year, a heavily boozed-up mosh pit getting ever rowdier as the clock ticked past midnight. At one point a security guard even had to intervene to break up a fight. It was all terrifically old-school, and a plausible spiritual home for the Crumpets’ wacky, coked-up take on rock music. Tonight – a dull Tuesday night in February, in Newcastle’s dullest venue – feels like a much less noteworthy occasion, but it is at least the opening night of yet another Crumpets UK tour, and the band stride onto the small stage as Nessun Dorma of all things booms through the speakers.

The band rip into the new album’s two monster lead singles, Salsa Verde and Manny’s Ready to Roll, as I plot my route from the bar to the pit. This crowd simply aren’t ready for the brilliance of the former track in particular, relentless riffs raining down before a canny interpolation of Come Together and face-melting guitar solo. Somehow the Crumpets make it all look effortless, drummer Danny Caddy negotiating every last rhythmic handbreak turn (and there are many) whilst hardly breaking a sweat. At their best, the Crumpets’ front line of guitarists (McEwan, plus Luke Parish and Chris Young) are nothing short of virtuosic – you’ll be hard pressed to find a contemporary rock band capable of dishing out so many blistering, labyrinthine riffs with such precision and verve. It’s true the Crumpets are a silly band and their gigs are cheap and frequent, but make no mistake: this is very much a quality product, delivered with staggering technical ability.

Yet, for all it’s complexity, the Crumpets’ music still feels gut-punchingly visceral and immediate. March On For Pax Romana, for example, is a mind-bogglingly detailed piece of maximalist psych rock, but Caddy’s driving drum kit ensures there’s no time to ponder the finer details of each spell of guitar wizardry as the band confidently shift gears from aggressive half-time funk to baroque counterpoint to pummelling thrash metal – and that’s just in the bridge. It’s a song that reminds you just how much scope there is for compositional genius in rock music. There’s so much musical content there to analyse I’d call for it to be included on the GCSE Music syllabus if it wasn’t for the unfortunate band name.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are clearly a very well-drilled band, and even tonight’s fastest numbers – punky Another Reincarnation, for instance – are doled out with little visible difficulty, at least from what I can tell through McEwan’s impenetrable mop of hair. It’s both a strength and a weakness. McEwan doesn’t spend much effort playing the showman because he doesn’t have to – the material is plenty good enough to stand on its own – but the set’s big musical moments lack palpable on-stage passion to match. Central showpiece Found God in a Tomato, for instance, is spun out for a hypnotic ten minutes of instrumental prog rock, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the Crumpets are just dishing out the same rendition they have no doubt delivered many, many times before. NUSU, with it’s lack of interesting lighting and muddy speaker system, certainly didn’t help matters.

That said, for audience members on-stage theatrics don’t really matter when you’re preoccupied with dodging a fist to the face in the mosh pit. Incubator (V2000) kicks off the encore, in what McEwan announces is a live debut, a baffling fact considering how potent and mosh-primed that blunt-edged guitar riff is. Fan favourite Hymn For A Droid predictably caused the most dancefloor casualties. That opening riff alone is very potent stuff indeed, and to dive into the pit as Caddy’s drums go supersonic is the sort of all-consuming live music experience I believe everyone should try at least once. “Now we’re here, everything’s unclear,” McEwan belts in the spectacular chorus. In some ways he’s right – limbs are flying, beer is raining down from somewhere, one lad has literally lost his glasses. But what I really feel in the middle of this deafening Psychedelic Porn Crumpets gig is a sort of clarity. This is the joy that makes live music such an important, enduring aspect of my life. This is the cathartic sound of freedom, of authentic personal expression. This is what really matters.