Resist Resist support YACHT, Yuyintang

While Andy was over at 696 catching a somewhat haphazard sounding show featuring Second and Lei Ren, I was down at Yuyintang. On the bill were a Violent Femmes cover act, the Violent Phlegms (see what they did there?), The Youth and The Destroyer, Resist Resist and YACHT. I'd seen and met YACHT back in 2007 when it was still just Jona (he's now been joined by Claire L Evans) at Splitworks' excellent Yue Festival in Zhongshan Park. He was so good that I went to see him again the next night at LOgO and he genuinely seemed to remember it, pointing to me in the crowd toward the end of the gig when looking for people who had been at Yue as well. Anyway, that's my fan moment out the way.

This being an STD show, I'd assumed that things would get going a bit later than usual (in fact, by the time YACHT was done it was so late that Kid Koala had already finished up his set over at Shelter, meaning I missed him). When I did get there though, I'd missed the Violent Phlegms. So The Youth and The Destroyer were the first band I saw properly. This is the band of STD promoter Reggie, who plays bass. This is the second time I've seen them (last time they were on the bill for the sell-out Ratatat show at Dream Factory, also an STD night) and they only play sporadically. To be honest, this showed a bit. Putting your own band on the bill when you've got a big international act in town is all well and good, but they didn't really blow me away and I feel like they need more work.

Resist Resist have been gigging more regularly lately. They played the Antidote Festival down in Zhujiajiao a few months back and I thought they were pretty good. They weren't totally satisfied though, so went away for a while and honed their sound. They've now come back with a strong set of songs and are playing more shows. They were all dolled up for Hallowe'en and cracked out a solid set of synthpop that got the crowd going. Lucy has grown in confidence a lot since that first show and this means her vocals really come through now, which is great because she has a good voice. Definitely a band to look out for and they paved the way nicely for YACHT, who were excellent.