Musik Box Brings Five Very Different Sides of Alternative Music to The Vic Inn

There is something particularly satisfying about a gig where the line-up does not make complete sense on paper. Rather than five variations on the same sound, Musik Box’s night at The Vic Inn on 16 July moved through experimental electronica, pop-punk covers, polished indie rock, infectious pop-punk and snarling modern punk. It was the kind of bill that gave each act their own identity, while showing just how broad a small grassroots show can be when promoters are willing to mix things up.

Sounds Like Yellow

Opening the night was Sounds Like Yellow, a solo multi-instrumentalist combining synths, guitar, programmed beats, rapping and singing into something that became increasingly difficult to categorise. There were obvious flashes of The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy in the harder electronic moments, but these sat alongside hip-hop beats, post-punk vocals and an unmistakable streak of 80s electro.

At one point, after messing around with the synth to find the right preset, the whole thing suddenly launched into what sounded like the soundtrack to a space-age computer game written by someone with an unhealthy collection of vintage synthesisers. Classical-sounding melodies collided with techno and hip-hop rhythms before post-punk vocals arrived over the top. Somehow, there was still a proper melody holding everything together.

There was an experimental feel to the performance that made it seem as though Sounds Like Yellow was discovering where the songs could go at the same time as the audience. Throw in an Andean twist among all those electronic and post-punk influences and comparisons become increasingly useless. Sometimes that is a very good thing.

Accused

Accused took things in a completely different direction, turning The Vic into something closer to a sweaty alternative club night with instruments. The crowd grew considerably for their set, and a run through recognisable rock, pop-punk and nu-metal favourites gave everyone plenty of opportunities to get involved.

The Offspring’s Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) went down exactly as you would expect, while covers of Jet, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance kept the singalongs coming. I’m Not Okay (I Promise) in particular is one of those songs that seems permanently embedded in the brains of anyone who spent enough time around alternative music in the 2000s.

The most interesting glimpse of what Accused could potentially become came with Deftones’ My Own Summer (Shove It). The heavier sound suited them, particularly when the screamed vocals kicked in, and it would be good to hear these guys explore more of that territory. There is clearly a band here capable of leaning further into nu-metal and heavier alternative rock if they want to.

Flex Index

Flex Index brought another shift, this time towards expansive indie rock with hints of electro-pop and plenty of 80s and 90s influence. There are shades of The Police and U2 in the guitar work and scale of the songs, alongside the sharper rhythmic indie sound associated with bands such as Bloc Party.

The easiest, if slightly ridiculous, way of describing it is that Bloc Party had a baby with The Police and then let U2 bring it up.

More importantly, Flex Index sounded like a band built for considerably bigger stages. The songs have that anthemic quality needed to fill more space, but the performance never felt like a group attempting to manufacture grandeur. They are simply a very tight and experienced band, and you can hear that experience in the way everything fits together.

There is a confidence to their sound and stage presence that suggests a festival stage would suit them particularly well. Give those songs a bigger PA, a large lighting rig and a few hundred more people and it is easy to imagine them growing into the space rather than getting swallowed by it.

Jonk

If Flex Index brought the polish, Jonk brought absolute chaos in the best possible way. Back at The Vic for the first time in around a year, the four-piece introduced themselves as Josh on bass, Tel on drums, Ryan on guitar and Alice on vocals before launching into a high-energy mixture of pop-punk and pop-rock.

There were high kicks, dancing, huge vocals and the general impression that everyone on stage was having far too much fun. That energy quickly spread into the room, with people in the audience dancing along as the set progressed. Alice is an excellent frontwoman with the vocals and personality to command the room, while bassist Josh appeared physically incapable of standing still for more than a few seconds.

When he was not dancing around the stage like a funky little lunatic who would have done James Brown proud, he was lying on the floor playing bass. It would have been very easy for all that movement to become distracting if the songs underneath it were not good enough, but Jonk are tight enough to make the chaos part of the show rather than a substitute for one.

Then came one of the highlights of the night. Jonk launched into a mash-up of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Can’t Stop and Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, a combination that sounds faintly ridiculous until you hear it work. It was funny, clever and ridiculously entertaining, perfectly capturing what makes Jonk so enjoyable to watch.

Some bands look intensely serious about being on stage. Jonk look like they cannot believe they are allowed to have this much fun up there, and that enthusiasm is infectious.

Televised Mind

Televised Mind closed things out by dragging the evening into much rougher territory. Heavy, loud and confrontational, their modern punk sound sits somewhere around the current wave of British bands that have rediscovered the value of making punk feel uncomfortable again.

There are obvious touchpoints with the yob-punk aggression of IDLES and SOFT PLAY, particularly in the shouted, almost chanted vocals, but there is enough post-punk running through the guitar work to stop everything becoming one-dimensional. Twanging guitar licks cut through the heavier sections while the vocals remained aggressive and direct.

After the bright pop-punk energy of Jonk, it was another dramatic change of atmosphere, but that was really the point of the whole evening. Televised Mind finished the night with volume and aggression rather than easing everyone gently towards closing time.

Musik Box managed to put five acts on the same stage that approached alternative music from completely different directions. Sounds Like Yellow experimented with electronics, hip-hop and post-punk, Accused delivered a nostalgia-heavy crowd pleaser, Flex Index showed why they deserve a shot at bigger stages, Jonk produced the most infectiously fun performance of the evening and Televised Mind closed everything with a blast of modern punk aggression.

Grassroots nights do not always need perfectly matched bills. Sometimes it is much more interesting to walk into a venue without knowing whether the next half-hour is going to bring techno, Deftones, indie anthems, Taylor Swift mashed into Red Hot Chili Peppers or someone shouting over a wall of punk guitars. On 16 July, Musik Box gave The Vic Inn a bit of all of it.

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