Another hectic weekend in Brighton. Over 70 bands played at eight different venues around the city at this year’s Mutations Festival. While the likes of Pussy Riot and Warmduscher delivered much-talked about headline sets, we avoided the queues to seek out some new finds. We did pop our heads in for Bodega and Shame (pictured) at Chalk, but here are some of other acts we caught along the way.

Sister Ray
Latest Music Bar, Thursday
Initially, Canadian singer-songwriter, Sister Ray, aka Ella Coyes, cuts a vulnerable figure tuning her electric guitar on stage. When the set starts, though, her engaging manner and finely crafted songs soon win over the crowd. She opens with recent single ‘Crucified’, a tender love song: “If anybody’s gonna get crucified, I want it to be me tonight.” There are tracks from her ‘Good News’ EP, including the standout title track. There are songs from her lockdown album – ‘Communion’ – which, despite her avowed disdain for ‘break-up records’ has turned out to be just that. The songs are interspersed with shared stories about her European/Cree heritage; about her father and brothers; about how, as a teenager, she’d eat oranges to mask her underage smoking. “Though mom always knew.” A heartfelt cover of AC/DC’s ‘Up To My Neck In You’ concludes a strong, intimate performance.

Gaffa Tape Sandy
Latest Music Bar, Thursday
On our radar since their ridiculously catchy 2017 single, ‘Beehive’, three-piece Gaffa Tape Sandy – singer-guitarist Kim Jarvis, singer-bassist Catherine Lindley-Neilson and drummer Robin Francis – just get better and better. They kick off with ‘Water Bottle’: “I don’t ever wanna die, I wanna be immortal”. Next up is the more sinister ‘My Desperate House’ off their first album, ‘Family Mammal’. But it isn’t all old stuff, and subsequent tracks suggest that their imminent newie is going to be excellent. ‘Split’, with its joint vocals and superb drumming, and ‘Evil Evil Evil’, which recalls New Jersey’s Front Bottoms, are standouts on the night, the energy level turned up to the max. And when they play out with ‘Beehive’ we’re left in little doubt that Gaffa Tape Sandy are on the cusp of breaking big.

Naked Lungs
Hope & Ruin, Friday
Intrigued to hear that Dublin-based band, Naked Lungs, have worked with Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox, we head off to check them out. And from the first crashing chord, it’s clear they mean business. The four-piece create a hypnotic post-punk sound, with Andrew Connaughton’s driving guitar set against Ryan Martell’s bass and Matt Pyper’s machine-like drumming. Over it all, Tom Brady’s impassioned vocals swing from the sensitive to screeched passion: “Relentless. Relentless. You are relentless.” Older songs like ‘Database’ and ‘Second Song’, with its wonderful line, “Am I fee, fi, fo, fumbling, tumbling down?” go down well. But there’s enough in the newer pieces – one coming across like a demonic nursery rhyme about someone who “says she sells seashells” – to whet our appetite for their next release. The set ends with ‘Why Do People Change?’, which builds to a glorious climax that leaves us wanting more.

Bodega
Chalk, Friday
We first caught Bodega in 2018, back when Chalk was The Haunt. Now they’re back here with a new album – ‘Broken Equipment’ – and are better than ever. They kick off with ‘Jack In Titanic’ off their first album, and the scene is set: bounce and humour, and some of the cleverest lyrics around. Ben Hozie and Nicky Belfiglio handle the vocals, but our attention is captured by new percussionist, Adam Shumski, who plays standing throughout the set. ‘Doers’ off the latest album gives a wry take on the band’s urban background: “This city’s made for the doers, The movers, shakers, Not connoisseurs… Health food reviewers… The humours, Tubers, entrepreneurs…” There are nods to The Ramones and LCD Soundsystem, yet Bodega have created a sound that is absolutely their own: punk-infused art rock of the highest calibre, and the 45-minute set is over way too quickly!

Lowly
Green Door Store, Saturday
Five-piece Danish band, Lowly, start their set with the title track off their upcoming third album, ‘Keep Up The Good Work’. With its samples, sumptuous washes of electronica and evocative lyrics, it’s a great calling card, building and building to its euphoric conclusion. ‘i’ off their 2019 album, ‘Hifalutin’ follows soon after, the vocals of Nanna Schannong and Soffie Viemose combining sweetly over Kaspar Straub’s endlessly inventive keyboard work. They segue into ‘In The Hearts’, “There’s a darkness and a shadow, And a sorrow in the hearts… in the connected hearts.” This is transportive, achingly beautiful dream pop that is melancholic, yet so uplifting. The new album is scheduled for release next February on Bella Union. We’re hoping that when they promote it, they’ll play for longer than the half-hour festival slot. We’ll certainly be there.

Redolent
Green Door Store, Saturday
Six-piece Edinburgh-based newcomers, Redolent, do not look like your standard pop group. Four band-members stand at keyboards arranged around a desk, a drummer sits in the corner, while vocalist, Robin Herbert, paces the stage, his sung lyrics simultaneously lit up by a scrolling LED display sign behind him. The songs have themes common to many punk bands – bad behaviour, “oh my god, what will your parents say?”; day-to-day tedium, “dark on the way to work, dark on the way home from work”; work, “work is shite… wasting my life for nothing…” – but put over in synth-based songs that are melodic and engaging. Their excellent single, ‘Space Cadet’ encapsulates both their sound and themes: “I don’t know much about anything… I’m a space cadet. My head’s full of scrambled egg.” They’re playing at next year’s Great Escape, and a First Fifty show this month in London. Highly recommended!

Lynks
Patterns, Saturday
Patterns is rammed to capacity by the time Lynks hits the stage. He’s dressed in some kind of leopard-skin onesie and gimp mask and accompanied by a duo – known as Shower Gel – who dance either side of him. They launch into ‘Everyone’s Hot (And I’m Not)’: “A nice straight girl tells me that I look good, But I really really really wish a gay guy would.” With their clever lyrics and avant-pop disco beats, Lynks’s songs prove irresistible to the crowd. ‘Str8 Acting’, ‘Hey Joe’, plus a pumped-up version of Courtney Barnett’s ‘Pedestrian At Best’, keep us dancing. And ‘Silly Boy’ – “Poor little straight boy started a fight and broke a metatarsal, Now everybody here thinks he’s an arsehole” – gets us singing along with the chorus, “Silly boy, you silly, little boy.” Brighton is “my second home” he explains; his aunt is in the audience. We hope he visits again very soon.

Mutations Festival, 3rd-6th November 2022
Words by Paul Stewart
Photos by Jason Warner