Swansea glam rockers BANDICOOT put on belter of a debut album show

Swansea’s finest glam rockers Bandicoot took to the top-floor stage of Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff for a Saturday sell-out gig the day after the release of their debut album, Black After Dark. Teeming with creativity from beginning to end, the four-piece took the audience on an odyssey through what is a perfectly crafted full-length.

The decorative light piano trills of Early In The Morning created a warm and dreamy atmosphere to which the crowd slowly oscillated, and even if the tenderness didn’t last as I found myself climbing out of a moshpit at the conclusion of subsequent track Dark Too Long – hey, that’s Bandicoot for ya…

Frontman Rhys Underdown’s vocals are remarkable, pitched somewhere between Thom Yorke and Edwyn Collins, and as he variously turned his hand to the electric piano, bass guitar and saxophone, his Bowie-esque presence was utterly theatrical. By no means unnoticed, too, was the relentless energy of the twin guitars, making for heavy riffs which, at times, crescendoed into squawking insanity.

Towards the tail end of this gig, energy levels in the room were extremely high which fuelled a couple of crowdsurfers, but to no avail, as the security were having none of it. As for this reviewer – the Saturday plan was an early exit post-gig, however, soaked with Bandicoot’s adrenaline one could not possibly go home and chill. In the event, I shimmied on to Womanby Street at 4 am as a tragic Elvis impersonator belting out “C’mon Fuzzy, you’re the one for me…”

Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Sat 5 Mar

words MARED THOMAS