At the end of the hottest day of the year, when I should have been outdoors drinking ice-cold cider under a cooling Sussex sky, I found myself in the sweltering city, suffering the suffocating Northern Line and heading for an upstairs room at The Lexington pub on Pentonville Road. There are not many things that could make me undertake such a blood-boiling journey but a triple bill of Vic Godard and the Subway Sect, Callum Easter and The Shadracks is such a pull that I had to be there.
The Shadracks' raw rhythms showed off their Childish Medway roots as they beguiled us with a short, blistering set. Sickeningly young, the trio's three-minute shards of proto-punk showed a knowledge of 20th century noise that belies their years. When they finished with a cover of Alternative TV's Splitting In 2, it sent me straight to the merch stall to buy their LP, where I was harangued by one of their fans who said I should be buying two of their 7" singles, as well; one contained covers of two X-Ray Spex songs, just to underline The Shadracks' punk rock lineage.
Callum Easter is a different proposition altogether: I've been playing his Here or Nowhere LP since it came out on Lost Map records in April and have been entranced by his sparse and ethereal tunes and ghostly vocals. Based in Edinburgh, but hailing from Dunbar, Easter was part of The Stagger Rats and worked with Young Fathers before going solo. He was alone onstage and replicated the fluid forms of his album with accordion and drum machine and, on one song only, guitar. The bass drone of the accordion underpinned each song and the haunting title track was a standout. The songs are dark and intense and, up-lit by a solitary spotlight, Easter struck an austere figure and his incredible set pitched him somewhere between Nico and Suicide.
It was a Vic Godard tweet that first alerted me to Callum Easter after he had supported Subway Sect in Edinburgh late last year and it was Vic that brought him down to London for this gig. Last night, the ever-changing Sect line-up featured, amongst others, Johnny Britton on guitar, Simon Rivers from The Bitter Springs on keys and Vic in a Die Hard Bruce Willis white vest. This was the second time I had seen Vic since his retirement from the Post, and he has never seemed happier on stage - even if he over-exerted himself at times - and the band have never sounded better. This year's brilliant LP, Mums' Revenge, featured heavily: the set opened with Neil Palmer Woz There, on which ex-Bitter Spring Neil read his poem about illness and love, with its heart-rending refrain of 'I'll be there', over Vic's 2017 single Can't Take The Sunshine Away; and I'll Find Out Over Time, Flash The Magic Sign and Inertia were testament to the current strength of Vic's songwriting. To prove that this has always been the case, we also got old favourites Stop That Girl and Double Negative, one of the earliest Subway Sect songs; the line in the latter, 'they want the keys to the city, watch them fumble for the keys to their car', made me think of those incompetent politicians vying to take the most powerful job in the land. When Vic introduced Inertia as 'our Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun', time was running out and I had to set the controls for the heart of East Sussex and leave early to subject myself to the heat of the tube and the haphazardness of Southern Railway.
