As part of their February tour to promote their new single ‘Tell Me’, Bristol quartet MOTHER VULTURE descended on The Barrel House in Totnes support by Cornish duo TAUNTS and Devon duo MORIATY, how was the evening? You’d best read on to find out!

The date was 02 02 2020…..sounds like the start to an episode of Star Trek made in the 1970’s doesn’t it? I was told tonight that it’s the first time in 900 years that the date can be read the same forwards as it can backwards, I believe this phenomenon is called a ‘palindrome’, at least that’s what Jordan from Moriaty told the audience at The Barrel House in Totnes tonight. I looked it up when I got home and he’s right, I also thought up a couple of my own palindrome’s, ‘madam’ and ‘nurses run’, check it out, its fun but NOT as much fun as the evening of musical entertainment I just had in Totnes at the aforementioned venue.

I was going to title this piece as “02 02 2020 The date 2 duos and a quartet took over The Barrel House in Totnes….”, lets over analyse this to fill a few more seconds for the reader….

“The date 2 duos” (Taunts and Moriaty) - these can be depicted by the 02 02 (2 x 2) of the date itself

“and a quartet” (Mother Vulture) - this can be depicted by the year 2020 (2 x 0 x 2 x 0 = 4)

God, I’m a genius!

Tonight saw Bristol based quartet MOTHER VULTURE dazzle Totnes with their wares, with tracks more catchier than the corona virus and more addictive than the street drug favoured by tramps and meth-heads ‘spice’, what’s not to like? The only bummer was that I have to be up for work at 5:30am but what the hell, you’re only young once….!

Opening the evenings entertainment was Cornish alt rock heavy riff conjuring duo TAUNTS. I’ll admit that I’ve never seen or heard these before and after 25 minutes of watching them perform live, I can honestly say that they were FAB! Their songs were chock full of full fat riffage and saw the room singing along to numbers such as ‘Little Lost Lamb’ as Ele (bass/vocals) wandered into the crowd to compere a singing competition with the 2 halves of the audience that were lucky enough to get a ticket to this superb Sunday night extravaganza.

I chatted to Luke after their set and after brief introductions, agreed to spin one of their tracks on my new music radio show so keep your eyes on my Facebook page for news when this is going to happen. I love nothing more than discovering new bands, especially when they’re pumping out fat dirty riffs with a gnarly beat…..

…..which leads us nicely on to the next act, another duo, called MORIATY, we’re no strangers to these chaps and have covered them a multitude of times over the past few years but it’s always a treat to see them playing on local soil. I like to think that every time I see MORIATY, I come away having learnt something, tonight was no exception;

• Jordan explained to the room the benefits of having a kale smoothie every morning (he said that it was similar to doing a line of coke every day but was ‘different’, I bet it is my friend!

• Jordan also cut off all his hair recently as it was annoying him and dyed it, I’m unsure what the chosen colour was but he’s now sporting a rather fine looking pink/red bonce which Matthew picked up on and said that he was just trying to copy his own hair colour (strawberry blonde - ok ginger)), there was some to-ing and fro-ing between the two band members and I think Matthew won the battle by adding that at least he “didn’t look like a smack-head”, very amusing stuff indeed.

• The third and final thing I learnt tonight was the palindrome thing, whilst I’d heard of the term ‘palindrome’ before, I couldn’t have told you what it actually meant, every MORIATY gig is a school day!

Anyway, enough jibber jabber, back to the music…..

Their set contained just about every heavy hitter in their arsenal including ’24/7’, ‘Pure Filth’ and ‘Think You’re Hard?’ Which set the room alight. They followed this up with the rock n’ roll nuclear warhead ‘Jealous MF’ which is SUCH a strong track, you just NEED to hear it. If you head to YouTube to watch the video, you might recognise a couple of members of hit Bristol quintet IDLES in the music video! Sandwiched in the middle of this blisteringly fantastical track was a cover of Blur’s ‘Song 2’ which saw the room chanting along with the ‘Woo Woo’s’ (you know the bits I mean!)

Moriaty are a superb live band and I hope that they manage to get out and about this summer at as many festivals that they can, they deserve to be heard by as many people as possible, if you get the chance, why not help to spread the word on the social media, they’ll thank you for it!

Then it was time for the main event, a band SO GOOD that I have officially named them as one that have changed my life. There’s not many bands on this list I can tell you, one was SLEAFORD MODS, a totally original outfit comprising of poetry backed by programmed beats, simple, but HOW ON EARTH could they sound so good and garner such a strong following when they played live, goodness knows but either way, they’re on the list. Next up are IDLES, I saw them in Exeter at The Phoenix in 2016 before their debut album Brutalism landed (Moriaty supported them that night) and they absolutely blew me away. From the moment I walked into the auditorium and saw Joe Talbot pacing the stage like a demented Henry Rollins who had just lost a staring competition with Stone Cold Steve Austin, I knew that we were in for something special and how right I was…..

So onto tonight’s headliner MOTHER VULTURE, a band so good that they have single handedly remoulded the cookie cutter by which all other bands would be using to shape themselves. 

The energy that these four guys put into their performance is incredible, whilst Brodie (guitar) and Georgi (vocals) are touring the audience (as they often do), Chris (bass) can be found running (not jogging, but full on sprinting from one side of the stage to the other, full pelt with his bass around his neck all whilst Matt (drums) stays firmly rooted in place behind the skins keeping the beat.

I’ll talk to ANYONE and EVERYONE about this band, they are absolutely incredible and I love it when someone who I recommend them to comes to a live show and comes to see e after the show, the look of ‘WHAT THE FUCK’ is written all over their face!

This tour is to promote their latest single ‘Tell Me’ which I managed to get the exclusive rights to a whole week before the release date, I played it on my RADIO SHOW on January 24th and also mentioned the band to Steve Lamacq when I saw him in Exeter at a Frank Turner show at The Cavern on 30th January so if they end up getting played on Radio 6 Music, I’ll be queuing up for my pint from the band as a thank you!

Their setlist carried other bangers such as ‘Mr Jones’, ‘Objectify’ and of course, ‘Jokers Smile’ which had the room rocking like it was a Friday night and nobody had work to get up to the next day…..if only!

I chatted to the guys after their set and they said that they were hoping to get into the studio later in the year to record their debut album, I cannot wait for this day to come and will continue to shout their name from the rooftops wherever and whenever I am able to.

If you missed them in Truro and Totnes, you can catch them on the remaining dates fo their February tour in Gloucester, Newquay and Bude. Do you selves a favour, go along, get stuck in, strip off (as it’ll be a very hot affair) I guarantee that you’ll have the time of your life!

Words and Pictures by Steve Muscutt

To see ALL of the photos we took at the show, click HERE