PINS / Bird – Festevol Gardens, Liverpool, 11th August 2012, By Mike Hughes

Excellent, my suspicions are confirmed, Mr Revo Ziganda does in fact have a real name. But I’ll keep that to myself, he’s earned the right to a nom de guerre, and to congratulations for the solid impact he is having on live music in Liverpool. It is regularly tempting me away from that (not so) quick nip up the motorway to another northern town. Festevol Gardens was a take-over of the Kazimier, running over two consecutive Saturdays, making use of an atmospheric stage in the backyard, as well as the main stage which was as-ever festooned in camera-foiling red smoke. I missed the first of the two weekends. Judging by the randomness of photos I saw – anonymous blood smeared legs, group self-portraits with only the toilets in focus – it had been a messy one.

Part Deux was a long old line-up, starting at 4pm or some-such nonsense; we only got there for the pause for breath at around seven. We DID get there in time to see The Loud, a band that claim to be garage-glam, and who are we to argue – they were a good band for us to get warmed up with, giving it heart and soul: I can see why they’re earning soubriquets.

We were all set to enjoy a bit of Filter Distortion out in the yard, but somehow the times were getting royally f*cked up, a pity when there’s been effort put in to try and ensure the two stages are not clashing. It was even more bizarre that they then seemed to get straight back on track, liking living in a worm-hole.

So having waited in vain, we left Filter Distortion unheard and dived back indoors to see Bird. Like everyone else tonight, they were a band I hadn’t yet seen perform, but when they got on stage I had an a-ha moment, “…oh, that’s who was standing next to me at the Savages gig…” So many bands there are out there, but this lot have really got something going on. The band recently became a three piece. It’s not always been that way – but it’s now firmly Sian and Adele, with Alexis hitting things, gently, at the back. The stripped down format suits them. Gosh, they were good, gauzy vocals floating between the two girls. Adele’s swirling over-size chiffon sleeves and the string of flower fairy lights tells you a lot of what you need to know about this band. That and the fact that they can sound like an English madrigal society while covering Bauhaus track “Bela Lugosi Is Dead.” Tonight had two very definite high points, of which Bird were the first.

Back out in the yard, tempted by Mello Mello’s food stall but not much fancying juggling a rucksack, cameras, beer and some healthy veggie wrap thing, we instead caught a set by Kusanagi Sounds. They confused me by being an instrumental band that played something akin to US hardcore. Cognitive dissonance is a good experience, and so were they, solid.

Next up, back and to like the proverbial, on the indoor stage were caught a couple of songs by Carousel. In a night of so much music new to me, they failed to leave a distinct impression, although I can recall that the audience seemed enamored enough. It’s a bad choice of name, there are sooo many bands also named after that particular circus ride.

A band that did impress were Muto Leo. There were like a zillion of them on stage out there. OK, there were four, but it seemed like a horde. What was it tonight? Another band with no words, but this crew were much more impressive. Like some sort of modern jazz take on dance complexities, not a million miles from the party spirit of Friendly Fires.

I said there were two high points, the second, and by far the best band I saw all night were PINS. Again, they’re a band that had been on the periphery of my vision, and I think they’d been clouded out by other bands floating on a fog-bank of hype right now. Not so with these, but when friends start routinely referring to them as “the mighty PINS,” well, you gotta take a look. I blundered into the room when they’d been playing a few seconds and I could feel straight it way, the heavy brooding in the echoing rhythm, the complexity hidden in plain sight disguised as yet another female punk band. They are much more than that – the cleverness of Warpaint with the snot nosed attitude of… I dunno… Polly Jean at a similar age.

The visceral presence of singer Faith Holgate is of course the bigger part of the mix, with all due respect to a fantastic band, it has to be. And yet it doesn’t really convey how these girls rely on each other. I found out when I “shared a moment” with them outside post-set, and when I dug into it more after the event. Faith told me they will have been together a year in September – they’ve come a hell of a long way fast. She also told me that she’d found the rest of the band by putting up posters with tear off strips, like they do for lost cats, and possibly glossed over the slight ruthlessness needed to get the line-up exactly right. It also didn’t quite click when she was telling me about meeting that nice Simon Raymonde that I was getting a bit of an exclusive on something that would be big news a few days later– that they’d signed to Bella Union and will be putting out an EP in a month or two. That PINS is their (or at any rate Faith’s) first band is frankly astonishing.

– UK Correspondent Mike Hughes shares his wisdom here and at Catshoe.org.