MUSIKBOX Presents: Standers, Deceit, Orchard and Cherrystone Take Over The Victoria Inn

Thursday nights in September are not necessarily the easiest sell for a grassroots gig, but there was a decent crowd through the doors of The Victoria Inn in Derby on 17 September as MUSIKBOX Presents returned with another four-band bill featuring Standers, Deceit, Orchard and Cherrystone.

It was also one of those line-ups that became more interesting the longer the night went on. There was punk, indie, grunge, emo, pop-punk, classic rock and flashes of psychedelia, sometimes all within the space of a single set. More importantly, it was another chance to see young bands taking sounds that have existed for decades and pulling them apart, putting them back together and coming up with something of their own.

Standers

Sheffield’s Standers kicked things off and almost immediately had me trying to work out exactly where to put them.

There was a definite Arctic Monkeys influence running through their indie-punk foundations, but then pop-punk and emo started creeping through. A few songs later there were hints of Kings of Leon, 90s alternative rock and even moments that wandered towards psychedelia. At one point I was getting something somewhere between Radiohead and The Stone Roses.

And this is exactly what excites me about watching young bands at the moment.

They have decades of alternative music sitting behind them now. Punk, grunge, Britpop, emo, indie, alternative rock and the various revivals of all of the above have become this enormous musical toolbox. Rather than simply recreating one particular era, bands like Standers seem completely comfortable grabbing bits from everywhere. The result can feel incredibly familiar without actually sounding like one particular thing.

Their set had that same freedom to it. There was a little musical interlude while the frontman disappeared from the stage which, bizarrely, gave me U2 vibes for a minute. He returned, introduced the band and eventually lost the guitar altogether as they launched into a properly energetic number sitting somewhere between punk, indie and 90s alternative rock.

At times it almost felt as though Standers were simply jamming and seeing where the songs took them. Maybe that’s actually part of how they write. Either way, there was something loose, laid-back and pretty fucking cool about it.

It wasn’t completely plain sailing. They had sound and tuning issues, no setlist and, in their own words, were “sweaty as fuck”. None of it really mattered. They were still there, still playing and clearly loving it.

Then they pulled out a song that was grunge as fuck.

Maybe I’m showing my age here. As a 45-year-old bloke who grew up surrounded by a lot of these sounds, perhaps I’m naturally picking out all the different bits of the 90s and early 2000s. But I love hearing younger bands absorb those influences without treating them like museum pieces. Standers weren’t trying to recreate a particular decade. They were taking what they liked from it and doing something new.

Great band.

Deceit

Next up were Derby grunge band Deceit, and there was considerably less ambiguity about where these guys were coming from.

This was proper, dirty 90s-inspired grunge.

There is undoubtedly a heavy Nirvana influence in there, but Deceit have enough of their own identity and energy that it never feels like imitation. They pull from across the wider grunge sound, combining sleazy guitars with loose, growling vocals and enough weight behind everything to make the songs properly hit.

And when those vocals need to get aggressive, they get fucking aggressive.

There’s something satisfyingly rough around the edges about Deceit. The guitars grind, the vocals snarl and the whole thing has that slightly dangerous quality that grunge loses when somebody tries to make it too polished.

Even a dodgy guitar strap couldn’t stop them.

These guys are heavy as fuck, channelling the sound and attitude of 90s grunge through original material and, importantly, doing it justice rather than simply copying what came before.

Another very good young Derby band to keep an eye on.

Orchard

Orchard were next, with Maisie apparently having only just returned from a holiday in Spain before heading pretty much straight into a gig at The Vic.

That’s commitment.

Their set brought another change of direction to the evening. A cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams went down brilliantly with the crowd, but their own material showed a heavier side, leaning much further towards grunge and rock while still leaving plenty of space for Maisie’s vocals.

One of the newer songs, written by Maisie, shifted again into something much more late-70s and early-80s inspired, with a proper classic-rock feel before she introduced the rest of the band.

Then came another new one, dedicated to everyone who writes lyrics on the way to the gig and subsequently can’t remember them.

Fair enough.

That one had a completely different character again, with a definite 90s R.E.M. feeling running through it. Much like Standers earlier in the night, Orchard seem happy to move around musically rather than forcing themselves into one narrow sound.

They also brought back their mash-up of The Stone Roses’ I Wanna Be Adored with one of their own original songs, which is always a crowd pleaser and once again landed perfectly at The Vic.

Cherrystone

Closing the night were Cherrystone, a pop-punk band from Nottingham and Lincoln who absolutely did not ease themselves into proceedings.

They opened with a slower, grungier number and immediately the vocals stood out. Huge, powerful and soulful, their frontwoman has the sort of voice that can dominate a room without losing the emotion underneath it.

From there they went straight into emo territory. Twinkly guitars collided with hard riffs while those massive pop-punk vocals sat over the top. When she wasn’t singing, she was dancing around the stage and keeping the energy moving. There was barely a moment where the performance stood still.

The songs were catchy and clearly rooted in pop-punk, but, like much of the bill, Cherrystone weren’t afraid to reach beyond that. There were heavier rock moments, emo guitar parts, sleazy little riffs and even flashes of an 80s sound appearing in some of the choruses.

The male backing vocals were particularly effective, complementing rather than competing with the lead and helping make some of those choruses sound absolutely massive.

But it kept coming back to that voice.

There were twinkly guitar licks, finger-picked sections and chunky riffs underneath one of what the band described as the hardest songs in their set. Their frontwoman encouraged everyone to dance along and “shake their ass”, and once the song kicked in you could see exactly what she meant.

It was a powerhouse vocal performance.

They eventually brought things down with Dana, a sadder and much more personal song about her grandma, giving the set a genuinely touching change of pace before building everything back up for the final track.

Then Cherrystone finished with a huge heavy rock-pop number that had the room at The Victoria Inn shaking.

What a voice.

Another Strong MUSIKBOX Night at The Victoria Inn

What I liked most about this MUSIKBOX show was just how much crossover there was between the four bands without any of them really sounding alike.

Standers bounced around indie, punk, alternative rock, grunge and psychedelia. Deceit dragged the room firmly back into the dirty end of 90s grunge. Orchard moved between grunge rock, classic rock and alternative influences, while Cherrystone finished everything off with massive vocals, emo guitars and heavy pop-punk.

There is something genuinely interesting happening with a lot of the younger alternative bands we’re seeing at the moment. Genre boundaries seem to matter less. The music of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s is all sitting there waiting to be pulled apart and reused, and rather than another straight revival of one particular era, we’re increasingly hearing bands combine all of it.

Sometimes it’s polished. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes the guitar strap breaks, the tuning goes wrong, nobody has a setlist and everyone is sweaty as fuck.

That’s grassroots music.

And on a Thursday night in September, MUSIKBOX, The Victoria Inn, Standers, Deceit, Orchard and Cherrystone gave Derby another bloody good night of it.

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