The Trews @ Birmingham Institute Library 22/10/11

The Trews had been to the football in the Afternoon before this gig. Watching Aston Villa play West Bromwich Albion and guitarist John Angus McDonald seems pretty vexed at the difference between the 30 odd thousand at Villa park and they 70 odd here. “Why aren’t you guys more like the soccer crowd,” he admonishes. “They were so angry and loud.”

Perhaps an explanation – certainly as fat as RTM is concerned – for the somewhat  melancholy atmosphere are the dreadful indie support bands, Little Wing and The Sharp Darts. It wouldn’t be right, or indeed fair, for me to review either band as neither are remotely the sort of music I enjoy, but I have included some links for you to check them out if you so desire.

By contrast I have been a fan of the Trews since discovering their “No Time For Later” album online a couple of years ago. The Nova Scotia band have no pretensions to be anything other than a classic rock band and more power to them for that.

They also have a frankly, fantastic new album in the bag, in “Hope and Ruin” and they kick of a track from that this evening, the phenomenally catchy “World I Know.”

All is going swimmingly at this point, but guitarist McDonald still doesn’t seem to be in the best of moods. “Show me some love or we might as well go home,” he says at one point. The simmering undercurrent isn’t helped by an amp blowing – and as his brother, singer Colin explains, its one of a series of mishaps that have befallen the band since they arrived on these shores.

With a new amp borrowed from one of the supports its all systems go again but even after a rousing rendition of “Poor Broken Hearted Me” something still seems to be missing.

Until, that is, the encore, when all of a sudden the Trews cut loose and become the bar band you always suspected they were. Colin McDonald duetting with a member of the crowd on a Canadian folk song and fair ripping in to stand out cut on the new LP, “Misery Loves Company.”

There was nothing inherently wrong with The Trews tonight but their booking agent did them no favours. This gig belonged in a small room, packed with people with sweat running off the walls, not 70 odd in a medium sized room on a cold night in Birmingham.

Sometimes, Rock N Roll is about setting.

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