Capesthorne

[review by steve rastin]
Is something resembling a coherent live music scene finally starting to stir once more on the North Wales coast?

The area’s musical history has long been one of peaks and troughs – think the Bistro in the 80s/90s, the Breeding Ground around the turn of the Millennium, Bar Blu/ Dudley Arms/ Speakers Corner triumvirate in the early 2000s and the similar Vegas/ Pie Records/ Pot & Kettle set up in the 2010s, all of which were punctuated by periods where things were pretty quiet. Anyone involved in putting on gigs will tell you that it has been a massive struggle post Lockdown, with relatively few bands forming, punters reluctant to return to venues that are largely empty and a consequent shift towards tribute acts among the region’s so-called prestige venues. 

It was the staging of a battle of the bands at one of the latter that served notice that there is a welter of new, young bands forming with Glass Angels, Anyway Champion, Alabaster, Catriona and Krashout all making an impression and taking their first tentative steps onto the circuit.

This cause for optimism may well be permeating the established scene if the Slackrr/ Capesthorne/ Pan!k Attack gig at Rhyl’s Late Lounge is anything to go by. The same line up played the same venue 12 months ago, pretty much to the bar staff and each other and while the numbers who turned up on a wet, blustery February Friday were hardly spectacular, they were nonetheless extremely encouraging. 

Pan!k Attack are something of an anomaly on the pop-punk scene, having started as a Blink 182 tribute act before evolving into something a lot more idiosyncratic, credible and interesting. They use pop-punk as a starting point rather than as a template, twisting and mutating the root source into something darker and more personal and regular gigging has tightened them into a unit that hits the stage full of confidence and swagger. This was amplified by the fact that their hitherto two best songs, Severance and Freefalling, were first and third up in the set – Mike’s introduction of Freefalling eliciting a few chuckles when a member of the audience gave a quick burst of the Tom Petty song of the same name.
Little Green Car did its usual job of getting the punters singing along to its earworm chorus, but it was the strength of the newer material towards the end of the set that served notice that Pan!k Attack are a band to look out for.
Their best performance yet? Certainly the best that I’ve seen – and I’ve seen them live at least a dozen times. 

If Pan!k Attack have moved away from their pop-punk beginnings, Capesthorne (pic above) seem determined to burrow further into their classic source material. When you make that choice, you have to be good to stand out from the crowd and make no mistake about it – Capesthorne are absolutely on top of their particular game.
Their recent decision to expand their line up to a four piece has been a wise one as their sound is fuller, with a new muscularity to add to the melodicism that has always been a central plank of the band’s appeal.

What can we possibly say about Slackrr?
They may hail from Southampton, but the fact that their relentless touring schedule brings them to this region at least half-a-dozen times a year means that we have adopted them as our own. That touring schedule – upwards of 150 gigs a year – means that they are tightness personified, with Scotty and Cait perfectly in sync vocally and in movement. A change on the drum stool about 18 months ago might have been a potential banana skin for them, but Louis has slotted in seamlessly and has kept the Slackrr juggernaut on the road without any loss of momentum. 

All three bands have rapidly expanding diaries for 2026 – catch each of them if you possibly can – and this fact, in conjunction with the new bands emerging that were mentioned at the top of this piece gives us reason for some long overdue optimism.

The future’s bright, the future’s ………………… live and loud.