If you’re a frequent weekend warrior at London’s music venues and indie club nights, you’ll most probably run into Decoy Jet. The four-piece from Enfield seem to be playing hipster hangouts across the capital every weekend, and as a result look more at home treading (and shredding) the stage than they do off it. For such a new, young band, they have fire-starting chemistry and commandeered the stage at Camden’s Proud like rocking out was all they knew. They look like the kind of band you will find soulfully jamming in their downtime and they probably spent most of their time in the school classroom coming up with chord progressions.
At Proud, frontman Ted Joyce strolled on to the stage, Red Stripe in hand, and played so hard you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing in his head but music. Along with Alan Thompson on bass, Connor Johnson on lead guitar and Jonny Bailey on drums, they filled the room with an immensely tight fusion of 60s rock‘n’roll and post-punk revival, full of murderous riffs and licks. ‘Action Reaction’ saw them hurl into grungy garage punk with supercharged guitars, and ‘Don’t Need You’ was fiercely cool and full of funk, but throughout you can hear the influences from Oasis, Peace, Miles Kane, Nirvana, The Hives and The Stone Roses to name just a few of the long list of bands that came to mind during the set. ‘19’ moved away from snarling Brit-rock to a more current, exotic sound, like when The Strokes went less New York and more Machu Picchu. ‘Right Place, Wrong Time’ had the thumping basslines and catchy blues-rock riffs of The Black Keys, and Decoy Jet ended with the equally catchy but twice-as-dirty single, ‘Georgia’. The standout song of the night, though, was the as-yet-untitled and unreleased seventh in the set, which was an instant addiction. So if you’re looking for me I'll probably be on a street corner trying to score a release of this so I can turn off the lights, sit on the floor and listen to it on repeat for days.
Words by Holly Warren. Read more of Holly’s writing here
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