If you were a time traveller sent from the year 2076 to study the working customs of the people of 2020s Great Britain, storied Kings Cross music venue The Water Rats might seem an odd place to start. But then what I know about wormholes and flux capacitors wouldn’t even fill a postage stamp, so who am I to question the methods of tonight’s visitors from the future?
For that is the purpose of tonight’s entertainment – three boiler-suited chrononauts sent back to our era from fifty-two years hence with a dual purpose: to collect information about the employment norms of our time and set them to music, and to reassure us that it all works out in the end, there is no Skynet style android apocalypse, and in fact the robots are our friends.
First up is Shotgun Jimmie, freed from the song mines (where human songwriters create songs in real-time under the guise of AI, as the corporations behind them had realised that songs written by algorithms suck) to share with us some of his greatest hits. Performed on electric guitar and foot-drums (a set of pedal triggers with an array of sampled percussive sounds, including a ‘Yeah!’ shout, which has apparently replaced kick drum in all songs in the 2070s) it would appear that the future looks bright for fans of melodic slacker rock delivered with charm and wit.
After a short pause in which the rather lovely quilted backdrops are rotated to reveal the slogan ‘Never Work’ (the title of our headline act’s debut LP), we are joined first by Mathias Kom and then Ariel Sharratt, who, to the cynically minded, might look somewhat reminiscent of the two members of contemporary Canadian garage folk act The Burning Hell who share their names. We of course know better than those sneering doubters, and to prove their true identities they’ve brought with them a robot drummer, Pepper, who provides the beats behind an incisive and light-heartedly revolutionary set of songs deconstructing the follies of 21st century employment, with Shotgun Jimmie returning to add extra instrumentation.
From the aforementioned LP we hear the heroic supermarket epic of ‘The Robots vs Mrs Patel’, incitements to AI revolt in ‘Rise Up Alexa’, and the fable of ‘Two Jeffs’, one evil (and perhaps rather familiar) and one virtuous that asks us what kind of Jeff we want to be, all set to a pleasingly chugging guitar, Pepper’s tight time-keeping and the future’s two most popular instruments: the stylophone and future mouth (which looks somewhat akin to a harmonica). We’re also treated to tracks from their new EP Hardly Working (available tonight on cassette, which they had been reliably informed was the most popular format of our time): the hilarious ‘Casual Friday’, Sharratt-fronted punky pogo-fest ‘Polyester Polo’ and fast-talking ‘Working Hardly’, all of which hit their marks.
The absolute highlight though comes in the form of stripped-back country tune ‘I Don’t Mind Failing’, which triggers the sold out crowd into the kind of impassioned sing-along more often observed on major festival stages. It’s a beautiful moment and you can see the on-stage time travellers are feeling the waves of love heading their way.
They leave the stage, to return for an encore – funnily enough of songs by contemporary Canadian garage folk act The Burning Hell – which are lapped up and belted back at the stage by an enraptured audience. As anthem for any era ‘Fuck The Government, I Love You’ waltzes to its end and our visitors head back to the future, we leave with smiles on our faces and the thought that perhaps the years ahead might not be the dystopian hellscape we’d all assumed they would be.
Find out more about The Burning Hell on their Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter
Follow Shotgun Jimmie on Facebook / Instagram / Twitter
Review and photography by Paul Maps
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