Affection Place – Chipsum Gravy – Coventry live review

Affection Place – Chipsum Gravy – The Tin Music and Arts Coventry 29th May 2024

We headed for The Tin Music and Arts in the Canal Basin for another night from Sink or Swim Promotions to catch ‘modern high octane punk vibes’ from Chipsum Gravy and Lyon’s Post Punk Affection Place, with Dave Formula from Magazine and Visage playing with them. Read what we thought below.

Another night fiddling with car parking apps in the street by Coventry’s Canal Basin. We get sorted and head into the Tin. To be fair the photographer does give me six pence towards parking. It’s a challenging evening as the Photographer is on holiday and off to Istanbul in a day. So he is taking every opportunity to tell everyone that it’s a shame they have to go to work tomorrow as he hasn’t got to. We have a chat with Chipsum Gravy outside the venue and then head in to see who’s here. It’s an older crowd than usual, a result of one of Magazine being in the band, a fact they have played on somewhat with the advertising for the gig. This is summed up by the fact that I met one of my friend’s Dads for the first time. To be fair though, he’s probably younger than me. I say hello to a chap at the bar and he replies in French, I didn’t know that Affection Place were from Lyon. Eventually the promoter managed to coax Chipsum Gravy onstage and the gig begins.

They are a three piece. A loose bass line leads into classic hard rock with a punky pub rock edge, it sounds and looks like the three of them are just up there having a laugh and bringing us all into the joke too. It’s a bluesy rock boogie with bloody hard drumming.The drummer wears a hoodie and shades with his hair attempting to escape from the hood, the bassist wears a cowboy hat and shades and the guitarist has combat trousers and teeshirt, no shades, no hat. It’s old school punk like it used to be and old school rock like it used to be. Loud, fun music, the kind of thing that goes best with a couple of beers and a cigarette.There’s space in the songs and room to breathe, there are people dancing and getting into it. To be honest there’s lots to lie, it’s unpolished rock’n’roll with a bluesy punky edge, they hit a US punk feel as the music goes all Ramonesy, Jon standing next to me says they sound like Stiff Little Fingers and for a laugh I just say he’s wrong, but it’s a god comparison.They have nice harmonies and feel solid and real. They finish with a punk nasty clay records feel and then a Motorhead groove to end. I’ve mentioned a lot of bands here, but they really sound like Chipsum Gravy, an ace set.

Affection Place were billed as playing two separate sets but the running times have now changed and they are playing one extended set which works well in the end. They have a weird intro tape with samples and bleeps and the stage fills up. There’s a certain amount of Jazz whittling as they build up the sound and then the drums start a slow beat, the bass sounds mechanical and repetitive and a high, angular guitar sound joins in. It’s slow and spiky. It’s built on solid layers and sounds very post punk. The vocal matches the music well and as the singing starts the music gets faster and jerks around. Think Wire and Magazine, all these grooves are built on the sounds of the original Post Punk bands and the crowd want exactly this.They start up an odd spiky, funky bass line with stabs of guitar and a great drum sound. The guitar starts to strum and the sound expands. There are high noises coming from the keyboards and a high strange sounding vocal. Again, it’s a very post punk feel.

There’s a weird jazz funk interlude with what sounds like a police siren and then slides into Krautrock. The sound gets harder and the vocal more emotional, the band look like they are enjoying themselves. The singer tells us that they are from Lyon in France and they kick off a great big fuzzy guitar riff. The song is solid and hard, the vocalist is very focused and quite dramatic, the organ sound is very sixties garage rock, then it’s a full on psychedelic attack, a low cool groove and a soft measured vocal over it all. The frontman introduces a song in French and the guitarist translates, It’s about displaced people and it’s for them. It’s another spiky angular post punk crossed with Krautrock song. They get to an almost Killing Joke intensity with a long drawn out groove and a piano sound, the synths flow like strings now as they lead into a faster punky song, they play a song written during Covid with a more pub rock groove which has a prog swirl in the middle before chugging off into rock again. They are coming at things from a slightly different angle to what I am used to and as such it’s interesting. They then tell us it’s their last song and make a big thing about playing with Dave Formula from them. They play ‘The Light Pours Out of Me’ which is what most of the crowd are waiting for and get very excited about, the cheers keep the band on stage and they play Shot By Both Sides, which you know and I don’t have to tell you what it sounds like.

Worth coming out for.

Affection Place