Base Naked Review!

Base Naked

One of my favourite bands is The Jam. Firstly because Paul Weller is the MOD father and totally gorgeous and secondly but probably most importantly their deep, pronounced bass lines carry the songs forward acting like the spine of the tunes. I mention the above because Bass Naked’s bass lines are definitely reminiscent of The Jam. Powerful, Punchy, Totally carry the songs while the vocals glide over the top smoothly and without hick-up, Well all apart from when James gets to excited and falls into the speaker at Oxjam but that’s another story! I’ve seen Base Naked twice now, once at Magnet and once at Bumper. On reflection the larger stage at Bumper suits them and their sound as apposed to the closed in, dark and dinghy stage of Magnet. Base Naked are only a 3-piece band but their sound is BIG! It’s like classic stadium rock on miniature, which is a refreshing change from the poppy, indie bands that seem to be the new prototype for all live acts these days. The only problem with sounding like a classic stadium rock band is that your stage presence needs to match the powerful, uplifting sound that’s coming out of your instruments and unfortunately Bass Naked don’t quite have this yet. When watching them on stage its almost like they are playing along to a sound track. They have not been together long and they have the sound just right and with a little work on the stage presence they could bring Led Zeplin (esk) stadium rock back into the main stream. The lead singer resembles a young nirvana fan with his floppy hair, all I kept thinking was bring on the head banging! His voice is clear and diction perfect but this all could disappear with bad technicians. The drummer seems nervous when playing live and tends to stiff up a little. You can see the concentration on his face but in my opinion he shouldn’t worry because he is a great drummer, by letting himself go he could be a really great drummer, Keith Moon standard almost. Thrash it out, that’s what drums are for after all. Song – 7 hours from the sun …. So Nirvana if any one is reading this that has never heard them before and you would like to hear one song of theirs this should be the song you pick. It’s amazing! They have found their niche market and need to play a larger venue with dirty, dark cubbyholes where people can ‘rock out’ without fear of being seen. You could see the crowd looking around, watching out for people eyeing them up and all they really wanted to do was get the rock hands out and jump around to the bands many songs including their incredible Led Zeplin covers. These boys could quite possibly be the politest rock band around at the moment. They were full of thanks to the small but very enthusiastic crowd and the organisers of the event but boys, we should be thanking you. Don’t thank us, we love your band and we are privileged to hear you play in any setting. All in all, for a new band, these boys are great and I really enjoyed getting lost in their loud and beautifully sculpted rock world for an hour and would be more then happy to pay and see them again and again for a little light release for hum drum everyday life.