Ben Sherman's Big British Sound

Arriving at the Corner I wondered just what exactly is The Ben Sherman’s Big British Sound?

Was it the cacophonous sound of shirts being assembled? Was it throaty renditions of ‘God Save the Queen’ blaring though a speaker stack?

It turns out that it’s like a mini music festival held over the course of one evening’s listening.

Each year the British clothing company Ben Sherman selects a range of the emerging artists in the Australian independent music scene to come together and celebrate Ben Sherman’s British music heritage.

Each band includes covers into an established set list, name checking British artists they are influenced by, or whom they admire. The result is a line up of Australia’s notable upcoming musicians performing quick sets of their work dotted with uninspired covers of English nu-wave tracks, all in the name of a clothing company.

There’s no doubting that Brighton based Ben Sherman has been intrinsically involved with British music since the 60s. The brand has been the choice couture of the punk and nu-wave scene.

Artists and bands including The Clash, New Order, Pulp, The Kinks, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, Style Council, Morrisey and others have sported the Ben Sherman brand on stage. But how exactly is that relevant to the assembled acts on this shows bill?

Ben Sherman claims this event makes a connection between its support of UK music past, and Australian music present. What it came off as in the cold reality of a Thursday night in Richmond was a shallow marketing gimmick aimed at selling an ethos rather than focusing on performance.

An overcrowded bill saw performers only getting the maximum time of around half an hour to play and then they were unceremoniously booted off stage and followed by another act that had a completely different sound and style to the one that had preceded it.

This lead to a schizophrenic collage which from this reviewer’s perspective confused the majority of the audience who appeared less than enthused throughout the entire run time of the show. This criticism can be further investigated later, for the performances themselves were on a whole quite capable.

Big Scary

The first act of the night was Melbourne based Big Scary. Originally planning on creating a full four-piece band, Tom and Joanna instead created a full-band sound with only the two of them.

The duo, whose autumnal sound is much more suited to appease alt-folk fans than that of nu-wave music did well with the little crowd and stage time that they had.

Pikelet

Evelyn Morris aka Melbourne folk-psych wunderkind Pikelet appeared along with new Pikelet inductees Shags Chamberlain (synths), Tarquin Manek (bass, clarinet, backing vocals) and Matthew Cox (drums) bringing a cosmic space-prog edge to the show.

Building on the heady, swirling loops of her 2007 self-titled debut and sailing even further into the psychedelic pop stratosphere, Pikelet’s set included two covers of some interest. Most notably a cover of a Broadcast song whose 60s infused lyrics were an appropriate conduit for Morris’s own style.

While Pikelet performed admirably, the act’s unique stage presence was out of place here and better suited to a woozy Casio symphony congregation that was perhaps coursing through an elegant tundra of dream-inspired imagery - one that is littered with distant vocals.

Whitley

Whitley clearly missed the memo regarding cover songs; chiefly one must never cover New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’. Rolling over on the classic song is akin to arriving in prison and taking a beat on the biggest, surly guy in the yard. It reeks of earnestly trying to prove something and unfortunately this time around with a limp one chord cover of the New Order anthem, Whitley wound up on the wrong end of the shiv.

The performer’s singing/songwriting abilities are clearly capable and his quite stage presence endearing, but his ethos and style would be better suited for a love letter to the folk heroes that populated Greenwich Village coffee houses of New York than that of British Sherman’s punk heritage.

Bertie Blackman

By the sound of the applause and the sudden formation of the crowd materialising towards the stage, young miss Bertie Blackman was what most people were here to see.

Bertie first stepped onto the scene with Headway (2004), her folk-inspired debut album powered by acoustic guitar. The album’s single ‘Favourite Jeans’ became Bertie’s radio breakthrough and saw her dubbed “Australia’s underground queen”.

On her second album, Black (2006) Bertie returned armed with an electric guitar delivering a sexier, gritty rock sound. Bertie appears to be continuing to develop her sound on Secrets and Lies (2009) which blended electronic influences with her signature vocal style and penchant for ‘dark pop’.

Indeed Ms. Black was the most appropriate act to have on the bill with a sound and look indebted to Siouxsie and the Banshees by way of Polly Jean Harvey, but even so while her set was somewhat engrossing it was too little too late in a misjudged evening.

While the night’s revolving door set list was no doubt eclectic, with each of the individual performers trying admirably to gain momentum with the little stage time they were given, the final summation felt sutured and antiseptic.

It’s as if one was bowing at the self-proclaimed altar of a corporate deity. There’s no denying Ben Sherman’s musical heritage and influence on England’s nu-wave culture, however in this particular event, this reviewer could not help but feel that a pious fraud was being committed. The company desperately tried to reanimate the glory of its past musical connections under the banner of a ticket price where the only thing connecting the assembled acts is that Ben Sherman thinks that you should be listening to them.

Ultimately the passion rang hollow, and rather than a tribute to Sherman’s musical influences, there was not one moment given to the mod or punk sound. This fact alone left the evening felling stitched together by record executives trying hook punters in to acts under the guise of a homage.

Ultimately the assembled acts while all interesting and accomplished in their own right had nothing to do with the music that is affiliated with a heritage that Ben Sherman is so hell bent on reminding everybody about.

Fans of each perspective performer would be better to see these artists in their own show playing under their own set of rules. If one was really in search of Ben Sherman’s musical heritage a better way to go about it would be to sit down with a bottle of wine and spin about ten seminal 60s/80s records.

To simplify this laborious observation, the gig's intentions stand in the shadows of the slogan sewn into every Ben Sherman shirt collar. The statement reads, “History is made and never bought”…It’s an interesting juxtaposition and something to ponder as one wonders home staring down at their ticket cover charge.

Share this review on Facebook