On a recent single from their latest album, Bristol indie fuzzers Langkamer sing pensively about a storm in a coffee cup. But as they kicked off the second leg of their UK tour on home soil it was more of a storm in the Jam Jar, one of the city’s hidden gem venues which proved the perfect place for the four-piece to smash a bottle of champagne against new album No.
The setlist was dominated by their fourth album, but rumours of a full run-through were wide of the mark; Langkamer did play every song from No, but chopped and changed the order, interspersing their new tracks with a mix of fan favourites and deeper cuts. After some gentle soul-bearing from Eva Penney and Dylan-esque folk from Zach Thompson – a fellow Breakfast Records signed whose powers were immeasurably boosted by his fiddle-playing sidekick – Langkamer took to the stage slightly earlier than advertised and quickly showed that they could do this all day, all night and twice on weekends if they had to.‘Crocodile Clock’ is a great album opener but felt like a slightly slow note on which to start the set, but this quickly became a non-issue as the band eased the energy up with gang vocal melodies on ‘Hamlet’ and by and large kept the levels high.
Josh Jarman is that most interesting type of frontman, a vocalist/drummer who sets up centre stage, and his easy charm – not to mention his watertight rhythm work while singing – quickly indicated this was as fun for them as it was for us in the crowd. “We’ve played to our fair share of empty rooms and it fucking sucks,” he told the very obviously sold-out Jam Jar, whose response to the band’s new material – drip-fed through singles since October last year – was an indication of just how good even album tracks like ‘The Gates’ and the jaunty 90-second indie romp ‘Billy’ are.
It was no surprise to see rapturous reactions to the band’s bigger tracks, with latest single ‘Babe Pig in the City’ going toe-to-toe with their first-album classic ‘The Ugliest Man in Bristol’ as Langkamer brought the show to a chaotic climax complete with a crowd-surfing guitarist.
Emerging after an inevitable encore, Jarman gave heartfelt thanks to the people of Bristol for enabling his band to make it to a fourth record. In an entirely appropriate show of belief in that body of work they then played its closing – and by some distance least-streamed – track ‘Goodnight Zoo’ before wrapping up with a warp-speed rendition of ‘Sea Mills’.
It was a fitting end to a very Bristolian night of breathless indie-rock, but that their tour encompasses their biggest London gig to date shows that their appeal extends well beyond the M32 – as it absolutely should.
Words - Joe Ponting
Langkamer official
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