Sell-outs at Sticky Mike’s make gigs feel like something from another era, and mainman Tim Presley did virtually nothing on Friday night to make any of the enraptured crowd believe it was, in fact, 2015.
That’s not to say he fronts one of those retro 1960s-aping guitar bands with more attitude than talent. Backed by three musicians (including Cate Le Bon on second guitar), he slashed at his six-string in such a captivating way it was hard to look away.
Primarily dealing in garage, with touches of the long, drawn out psych jams label mates such as Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall favour, White Fence were mesmerising, a miasma of old and new, the unique and the overly familiar.
Presley, a man of few words, lolled around the microphone, in and out of audibility, creating a sonic effect that was dizzying.
If there was one negative, it was how the stage sound in the busy basement rebounded back at the band from the front row, getting muffled.
Maybe that’s how things would’ve been in the 60s. And maybe Presley, as the evocative mainstay in this somehow most modern of bands, knew that better than most.
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