The Twang: The Big Peg 21st May

The Twang: The Big Peg 21st May

Forget every bad word you have heard about The Twang!

***

Speaking to graffiti artist and the producer of The Twang's new album art work (which will be released in the summer), Temper about The Twang before the set I was eagerly anticipating an impressive performance. Speaking about the show in Dudley on the Tuesday, Temper told me about how amazing the new album tracks sounded live and how generally people responded well to hearing them. Temper was also quite complimentary about the guys, mentioning how they're all really nice guys, what you see is what you get, Phil being a front man on and off stage. After talking about them I was keen to see if Temper was right.

Opening with 'Either Way' which got them into the top 10, the majority of the crowd began to dance while others took photos of the guys in this tiny venue. Singer, Phil Etheridge after it seemed a little confused due to a setlist change which has happened every night this week while they experiment with new tracks. The Twang had made the decision to test the new tracks out on these dedicated fans attending yet also played the popular songs which had won these fans over anyway. 'Push Away the Ghosts' and 'Wide Awake' reminded me of a Twang which were plastered over NME in the previous year however they seem more mature than those guys which the NME portrayed as arses.

The new tracks went down well with by the final chorus' many fans had just picked up the words and were singing along. The final song before the encore was the most recent release from The Twang, 'Another Bus' which was available for free download on The Sun's website. Temper had told me that 'Another bus' didn't seem too popular on Tuesday however on Thursday they crowd were singing from the outset and seemed to enjoy it. I believe it's a brilliant new one from The Twang with the guitar from Stu being amazing to listen to. Another new track which seemed to go down well was 'Barney Rubble' which is set to be the next single for the guys and is going to be released around the same time as their new album 'Jewellery Quarter'.

'For all you naughty fuckers' Phil announced before 'The Neighbour' began which led to one of the most amazing audience responses I had seen so far in the set, with the crowd singing back over Phil and Saunders. By the last song The Twang wanted people to go crazy. Phil requested that 'the next time people go out in Birmingham to leave their camera phones at home' after that the crowd were dancing hard to 'Cloudy Room'.

The guys afterwards were a little worried that it wasn't as good as they had expected it to be yet that was in comparison to the previous night when they playing in Shrewsbury. Every member of The Twang are genuinely nice blokes, very much what you see is what you get except Saunders. On stage he seems to be another man, generating crowd response by dancing around.
All in all they have demolished all the bad things I had ever heard about them and replaced them with the fact that they are amazing performers with awesome music, new and old and have the ability to develop their sound into something which sounds as good if not slightly better than that of debut album 'Love It When I Feel Like This'. Live, things are raw, things are done on impulse and this helps to create one of a kind shows which I'm sure the fans love. The Twang breaks the mould and if the new live tracks they teased the crowd with last night as anything to go by then 'Jewellery Quarter' should be amazing.