**Those Goddamn Days of Summer

Morrissey* can just stick it as far up his tight, despondent, daffodil pansy-ing passage as is humanely possible. Just listen to this carping croon: ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday. Every Day Is Silent And Grey.’ No* and **no, oh sardonic quiffed one. It’s a Geena Davis snazz-sunglasses day, a glorious, smiling sunshine passion fruit of a day, a day for when Mr Company steps out into the scorching rays to exhibit pallid, flabby flesh under terrible Bahama shirts and shite taupe shorts. With his socks pulled up tight over pimply arctic calves that are gonna hurt your eyes, if you don’t shield ‘em quick enough. A day to conclude on a high. A predominantly illegal high. A day for Evader. Wooeee!

So the ‘Low Krew’ are at it again. Last time around we gave it large to those cheeky chappy cockney fruits Chas ‘n’ Dave (don’t you fucken laugh); this time, on this fine, frisky barbecue sauce and July Bugs-in-your-hair evening, we’re as pickled as Wombats swimming in a Deloux Chablis punch and cocktail, and we’re staggering around in stupor, in wait for dandy lo-fi Norwich pop threesome Evader. V’ by name and V’ by nature; That’s geetarist TristanV, bassist MikeyV and drummer RobV – those sacrosanct, floppy fringed heroes of Street Fighter II adoration and much celebrated sons of the kooky Nar-wich Scene TM. We’re so positively intoxicated from the mix of roasting heat, Scrumpy Jack and special, thin white fungi, that we fail to notice the ‘Vader plug in sparkly, sticker-plastered guitars and rattle the pom-poms.

Ryo Hazuki, You Have Two Lives Left

Game On. Here We Go… Our slacker champions stagger and prowl the tiny stage, glitter axes drooping in counterpart with floppy swabs of blond hair, a foppish veil to cover eyes in tetragonal shapes after too many nights glued to Final Fantasy VII. Adam Green is seen to be frolicking with a horny Kimya Dawson wrapped in a pink bubble wrap, ripped to shreds by marauding Lou Barlow zealots, brandishing spiky barracuda fish filled to the gills with Sweetex granny-sugar. We’re witnessing the shiny happy people bounce to the melodiousness. I’m seeing rolling, pink and white candy shapes and faces, although it’s debatable whether it’s in direct result of the music, or the aforementioned ‘sweet cap’ fungus, munched so compulsively by I, myself and my cohorts. Deep breath, swig of warm, flat Fanta I’m not gonna let the shrooms beat me dammit, I wanna pay attention to this band!

They’re so fantastically indolent and laissez-faire, Evader, that they’re nearly laying flat out on the ground. Flat out on the ground with Stephen Malkmus clambering crooked staircases and riding rickety Stutz-Bearcats through Cali in the hazy, blue summer backdrop of tree houses and chirping crickets. Evader, the band so imperturbable that Malkmus himself got fidgety, and leapt out the barn sty shapes of ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ and went looking for batteries for his walkman. Evader, the band that stole Heather Lewis’ heart in the jamboree and chased a befuddled Rivers Cuomo around with her dog-chewed drumsticks and fuzzy tape machine. Evader, the band that breathe naïve, unsophisticated songage for you to fall in love with.

Ryo Hazuki, You Have One Life Left

I’m telling you now, those shrooms are beating me. Tristars’ head is about 100x its normal size, Mikey Vader has become a giant green Blanka on hyperspeed and Rob is beginning to appear like one of the bearded dudes from Grandaddy. Oh. He does look like one of the bearded dudes from Grandaddy. Through the clown faces, the swirling candy shapes and the screaming jeebies, I’m sonically assailed by a serrated Dinosaur Jr bumblebee distortion that’s laced with chunky, cloud-shaped lumps of saccharine. I’m immersed in the woo woo-ing Weezer-stroking-Brian-Wilson’s-hair inside the anthemic ‘Malt Shake’ and bawdy ‘So Good’. By the time ‘Saturday’ comes and that double vox spell (Tristan humming the sweet, lead melodies and Mikey providing the oohs and the ahhs and the grrrs and the rahhs) races my earlobes, I think something crucial is happening to my synapse signals and my poor, poor brain.

I’m inside the monitor. Woah, I’m in 2-D land and there are fluorescent green palm trees all around me. There’s funny, flowing flat blue waterfalls of big square pixels and there’s some dated looking text at the bottom of the screen; ‘Sega Corporation 1989.’ I got spikes coming outta my back. There’s a sappy, freaky bright orange fox with two tails hovering over my head. I’m Sonic The Hedgehog dammit. I’m Sonic The Hedgehog and I can go faster than Tails. I’m Sonic The Hedgehog and I’m going faster, faster, spinning faster, faster and I’m gonna kill that bastard Dr Robotnik if that’s the last thing I d…

‘Go Mario, Go Mario, Go Mario!’ Oh. Wrong game, wrong console. Well… Mr Tristan Vader, I preferred Sega anyway.

I have to go outside and lie on the grass for a while. The real grass. Without pixels and strange men in spaceships and goggles trying to shoot me.

Ryo Hazuki, Game Over.