About An Hour and Lydia Pugh - 19/10/08

With everyone involved in local music always seemingly going on about the lack of venues on the island, it is always nice to see another place open its doors to live music.

One place that has in recent weeks is Barbados, normally more of a regular nightclub venue they have reserved Sunday nights in October and November for ‘Guernsey Rocks’ nights of live music.

First on stage on the October 19th 2008 event was solo singer/songwriter Lydia Pugh who provided a great mix of covers and originals to a mixed audience, some of whom didn’t even to seem to realise the music was coming live from the stage!

Despite the slightly odd crowd and being roped off like some kind of museum exhibit Lydia played some fantastic songs, with her own compositions and her version of Incubus’ ‘Wish You Were Here’ really standing out.

The only real criticisms of I can find of Lydia are that tonight she was maybe too mellow for such a late slot on a Sunday and that her performance, while technically proficient, can sometimes lack a little soul.

Tonight’s second band were making their live debut tonight and About An Hour really showed signs of good things to come.

Kicking off with their version of ‘Maniac’ they played a selection of fantastic dance along pop-rock, with a hint of punk that sounded like the perfect marriage of the members previous bands Third Time Lucky and It Still Stands.

With a really fun style and presence on stage, thanks in part to ever-charismatic front man Danny Phoenix, About An Hour even managed to get a few people dancing and really seemed to ‘click’ together on stage.

Getting rid of the rope between them and the audience definitely worked to the bands advantage and despite the slightly odd vibe in Barbados the band played like they’d been playing together for a long time and were used to this venue too.

With a debut EP already recorded and due for release soon and more gigs in Jersey and over here in the pipeline it seems About An Hour could be heading for great things.