You the Living - Play hunt the dildo!!!

October 20th 2015

London, Garage (Upstairs), UK

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Welcome to the strange with London's original odd couple!

You the Living *** are an atmospheric Art-Rock / Alternative Rock with an once of Post-Punk band who live in London, but hailing from the UK / Canada. They have been on the scene for a while, and recently have got themselves signed... but what are this band all about?.

We went down to their show supporting Daisy Berkowitz (Ex-Marilyn Manson / Ex-Jack off Jill / Ex-Spooky Kids) to see if we could find out. You the Living start the first song 'Sleeper' and you think everything will be into motion. But it seems the band have really gone to sleep, as they have to stop and wait for keyboard player Natasha Stevens to get out of the loo.

I think it's a bit of shitty thing not to be on time for your own performance, especially when the rest of the band are ready to go. Including new bassist Arkadiusz Potyka, and then later on the embarrassement continues when she leaves the stage to go and get a tissue. So I guess the band have forgot to be professional today.

One of the things I don't like with You the Living is the atmospheric keyboards, which just sound like they have lifted the beats from an ambient soundtrack or a keyboard demonstration that has been taken from the lift from Hell. They have brought in a new bass player, who is quite good, but just doesn't fit the look of the band, but I think the lack of a drummer really does effect them.

Singer guitarist Aidan James is actually married to Natasha Stevens, and their is some very odd banter between them, that makes you feel even more uncomfortable. Especially when Aidan brings out a silver shiny dildo, to make even more atmospheric sounds on his guitar while he does Rockstar poses.

They do have some promising songs like 'Reprobate', which shows if they put some real work into it they could do well. Also closers 'Naked' and 'Wax' are tracks that the guitar work is really impressive on and show that the talent of the band is Singer / Guitarist Aidan.

The show ends up in a fun new game hunt the dildo that goes on for a large portion of their set, with members of the crowd joining in trying to find the vibrating object we can all hear that has fallen in between the stage and the front speakers.

It's like they seek it here, they seek it there... they seek it everywhere... where is the infamous dildo. I really think the crowd can't believe what they are seeing, but it is quite funny and good to watch. I have neveer seen this before, and I don't think i will ever see this again.

I can't understand why this band has been hyped up so much, and I have been told on countless occasions that their shows are really been packed. Well I have seen them three times now and there is never more than three people that have turned up for them, with the rest of the people turning up for the main act.

It's not that they are a bad band, Aidan does have a great deal of talent, and his guitar work is very good in places, but I feel the vocals are quite low in the mix so I can't really tell if they are good or bad. So I don't know if this is on purpose on not.