Being Dead, Man/Woman/Chainsaw, and Radio Free Alice, Live in London: a sign of indie to come

On Friday, May 24, the Shacklewell Arms played host to a truly international night of contrasts: the lighthearted surf pop of American duo Being Dead, the start-stop chaos of art punk kids Man/Woman/Chainsaw, and the Strokes-by-Stealth hookiness of Aussie rockers Radio Free Alice. But the triumph of Radio Free Alice revealed deep truths about the state of British indie—and direction it could be taking.

Being Dead began the night with their signature surfy playfulness, a style that brings together a surf safari of reverberating guitar tones with a sense of Devo-coded rhythyms. The sound is epitomised by their track ‘Muriel’s Big Day Off’, matching deadpan, nasal choruses with angular doo-wop harmonies. The band, led by multi-instrumentalists Falcon Bitch and Gumball, had a willfully awkward demeanour on stage, which conveyed an unmistakably likeable aura, floating on a bed of “good vibes” as they finish with a remarkably sincere ode to trees. Like the mighty tree itself, Being Dead seems to have been there since the beginning of time, simple, endearing, and necessary to human life on earth.

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One of the most hyped bands of the last year, Man/Woman/Chainsaw specialises in grabbing the audience’s attention as they writhe and wriggle on stage, infused with uncontained kinetic energy.

The band comes at the audience relentlessly with self- described ‘orchestral mayhem.’ Electric violin riffs and piano melodies dance upon stomping, staccato smashes on the guitar, and math rock rhythms. Each song builds to a crescendo, like in the stunning ‘What Lucy Found There.’

The problem is that that trick wears thin quickly: after bearing witness to a few Man/Woman/Chainsaw songs, it is obvious where every number is going before it has even begun. They know what notes to play to get the crowd moving, but between those notes, there is little space for nuance. This is a band famous for its potential; we continue to wait for this potential to come to fruition.

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Taking the stage, Radio Free Alice invokes the classics of post-punk: dark straight jeans, tucked and thoroughly buttoned shirts, dark leather shoes.

But despite their angsty post- punk underpinnings evoking Interpol and the Cure, Radio Free Alice are not strangers to pop songwriting. Radio Free Alice brings back the energy of the Stokes by stealth, with enough edge to slide into the hyperliterate British indie scene and enough pop in their step to match with hooks like ‘Paris Is Gone.’

This show saw the band unleash a bevy of new songs that demonstrate new levels of depth, such as ‘2010’, with effortlessly jangly guitar interplay reminiscent of latter-day Television. Radio Free Alice plays as if overcome with urgency, with every note ringing with immediacy, never playing too much or too little. In this way, Radio Free Alice is vital, as if their songs are the only ones that you need to hear.

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In a night that played with variety, juxtaposing bands that defy any pretention to those that thrive in it, Radio Free Alice became the highlight by circumventing that tension.

By circling back to an era where indie music could maintain angst and edge and still be intended for the masses, they rejected the need to adopt any kind of irony or intellectualism, instead opting for straight-up rock and roll sincerity. As the indie scene in the UK trends away from post-punk towards a more ambiguous future, perhaps it could learn something from Radio Free Alice.