The Tim McMillan Band: Tim McMillan vs Yogi Glare
The Tim McMillan Band @ Worldsend Hotel (upstairs)
10:00pm, Tue 1 Mar 2011
Oh ho ho. Ha ha ha heee. Ah… whee.
Fuck me, this was amazing.
Tim McMillan nonchalantly takes a seat with his guitar; a barefoot and bearded Brad Lewis quietly leans against a wall with his bass. Tim shyly addresses the audience with a quiet hello, a short introduction… and in the same breath he starts rapidfiring some vocals – almost rapping – before the pair leap into a song of amazing musical trickery.
And when I say “amazing,” I really mean it. Whilst the music in (the inexplicably named) Tim McMillan vs Yogi Glare is immensely enjoyable (covering a range of styles, from acoustic classical to metal to hip-hop to pop), it plays second second fiddle to the musicianship. McMillan himself displays an incredible dexterity, fingers dancing up and down the fretboard, flicking the body of the guitar for percussive backing. Brad Lewis is no slouch on the bass, either, with plenty of over/under switches. They play whilst wandering the stage, they play whilst laying down, they recline, they put their feet up… but they always, always seem to playing more notes than is humanly possible.
McMillan and Lewis occasionally harmonise some airy vocals that add a strange, contrasting texture to the music; at other times, there’s the odd metal-ish grunt or yell. The music mostly seems to be original compositions, borne of the Goblincore genre the band have created, with two notable exceptions on the night: both Africa and Stairway to Heaven were played with such intensity that it appeared they contained about four times as many notes as the originals.
Look – nothing I write here can possibly do The Tim McMillan Band justice (and I can only imagine what the addition of their drummer must do; one might suppose that the tighter band structure would restrict the playing somewhat, but Tim and Brad were already tighter than a duck’s chuff). I’ll just add that I’ve never seen a performance as casually showy as this; the way the two lads ambled towards each other, then suddenly started playing each other’s guitars in the middle of a song, without missing a beat was just staggering.
See them. Really.