Novella, The Shacklewell Arms, London

2013 is a really good time to be in a psych-influenced band. Even if you’re not really psychedelic and two years ago your band would’ve been called shoegaze or lo-fi, now is the time to be psych. For Novella, a band with quite a few of these labels hastily stuck on them, and with only a collection of singles/EPs released so far, this is the type of wave they want to be riding. In fact, there’s a long list of bands that have nothing to do with Novella’s sound and yet they share the same motto and belong to this hybrid scene that’s been living below the surface for a while under different names and is now giving the world some of the most interesting songs/characters to ever come out of the pseudo-indie dermis.

To place all this in the context of a very busy Shacklewell Arms, half of The Horrors’ siblings are members of the support band (Blueprint Blue) which also includes Melissa Rigby (former drummer of SCUM) who’s also in another band (Astral Pattern) that debuted live last month at The Horrors-hosted night The Cave Club (with drummer from MBV in attendance), and on top of all those soap opera friendly links, there’s also a middle-aged man in the front row wearing a TOY t-shirt.

Tonight, it doesn’t really matter if Novella are gazing at their boots too much, as the confidence coming from the stage turns their fuzzy notes into a bigger presence than their long hair can cover, and set opener ‘Something Must Change’ unifies their fragile aesthetics with the shooting aggressiveness of their loopy riffs.

‘Mary’s Gun’ is another mob of indifferent good taste, with heavy instrumental moments complimented by a caring melody able to either make you cry at night or get up with a smile in the morning. A much thicker ambiance is created to introduce the brand new tracks from EP ‘Murmurs’, some of which are getting their live debut, and if the band are using the crowd as a live rehearsal the reception is more than welcoming. Hypnotism and urgency meet halfway for closer (another new one) ‘Blue Swallows’, a fine snapshot of what this psych generation has to offer.