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There’s been a lot of hype and co-ordinated push about this homage to Newcastle and the north-east. I read this article in The Guardian prior to release for example and a piece run in Music Week about Universal getting behind Knats. I’m baffled really given how so many other acts on the UK scene are far more interesting but remain unheralded beyond the support of the usual suspects. I’ll be very interested to see if the hype actually means something beyond a few helpful high profile articles. To be frank I don’t like A Great Day in Newcastle – the title, much adapted down the years, riffing on a famous Art Kane 1950s photograph – at all. Reader: I have tried to convince myself otherwise!
Shouty spoken word, a gritty local storytelling angle that probably means something more locally than if like me you are not from the area, the opener ‘7 Bridges to Burn’ tries to be too cinematic.
There’s little grace to the approach. And the band are better when they stick to instrumental passages.
‘Gainsborough Grove’ with its brassy beefiness I preferred. But ‘Wor Jackie’ again riffs off dialect and shares something with the less than ideal opener.
The thematic instrumental section is more interesting than what has gone before, however. The core members of Knats who are essentially a jazz-rock fusion outfit at heart include Stan Woodward on bass, King David-Ike Elechi on drums, Ferg Kilsby on trumpet, Sandro Shar on keys, and George Johnson on saxophone. ‘Messy In’ is a swamp of keys to begin and ‘Azure Blues’ is dancier. But ‘Bigg Market Scrappa’ is far too shouty for my taste. ‘Carpet Doctor’ has a bluesy boogie-ing feel but again I am not at all won over by the spoken word story telling aspect. Pick of the tracks? I’m struggling to find one! I hope I am proved wrong, it all catches on and I radically change my mind about the band in the future and all this proves a roaring success despite my reservations expressed above. But hand on heart and I can only be truthful: it’s not my cup of tea at all.