Special delivery! Berlin residents Parcels are on the third day of their UK tour and have a package for you, Leeds. Can these royal males deliver the goods? Jim Phelps reports from a sweaty corner of the Brudenell.
Now wait a minute, wait a minute, Mr Postman– let’s stamp out these postage puns before this article couriers out of control.
I was somewhere around Harehills when my bike caught a flat tire, leaving me with a three mile slop through the rain. By the time I’d swung open the door to the festering cave of my apartment, I had barely the time to coif my hair and quaff a beer before I was back outside again.
Opening band Imbibe are mid-set as I stumble into the Brudenell. Catching their last songs, they seemed like sunny, breezy types with tunes straight out of the classic songwriter’s book: Fender Rhodes, solid hooks, tambourine on the 2 and 4, Hohner bass just like Macca used to have, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/break/chorus/END. There was no mistaking it: we were in very safe hands. The bassist enthuses the band has had “the beest fackin’ foive ‘ahhs eevah!” in Leeds this evening. I think he’s from Australia.
Parcels kick off their show with the tasteful pairing of Comedown and Lightenup and in an instant we’re catapulted back to another time. The music immediately evokes the sound of 70s funk. The snap of a Stratocaster. The four on the floor with a light touch. The sigh of strings squeezed out of an analogue synthesiser. An airy and light falsetto. A cowbell. The melody worming its way into your head. Each part perfectly complementing the song.
A clutch of Parcels groupies grooving away in front of the stage immediately catch the eye of keyboardist Patrick Hetherington, who points and declares “I love these guys!” They shout something back at him and a back-and-forth starts up before he tries to shut it down with a smile “I can’t just have a private conversation with you; no-one else can hear! Maybe we’ll talk after the show?” This is greeted by a roar of wolf-whistles from the crowd, and his bandmates have a good chuckle as he clarifies his position: “No-no-no-no! Not like that! Not like that!” Another cheer goes up as he dramatically pulls out a triangle for the next tune.
Parcels are having a good time, no doubt, and they have chops too. Just listen to the instrumental break to Gamesofluck, or witness how Hideout escapes its sombre verses and splits open into euphoric chorus. The band change direction on a dime and define in the pocket.
Not only that, but the band can sing. All the band can really sing. Every song is full of great harmonies and clever overlapping parts. It is all handled adeptly: not a bum note in the entire evening. Anatole Serret steps out from behind his drums to lend vocals to Bemyself, and Noah Hill’s fingers nimbly jump around his bass guitar as five voices chime together in perfect harmony. Older is chock full of choice notes straight out of a classic radio jingle. The sound of the big city on the beach.
Yourfault sees Parcels demonstrate they are equally adept at blissful ballads. A lost radio hit from the ‘50s. Grab your gal and dammit, hold her tight, man. Placed at a choice moment in the set, it’s like a hug or a postcard from back home amid the churning funk. The group transition into set highlight Everyroad with blasts of static from an old radio. It’s wonderful to experience this sort of stuff live and to feel the room gradually latching on to a groove more and more tightly as it develops naturally. The 12 bar structure of the song gives it a restless, circular feel and as the band gather momentum the lights began to strobe and the punters start to salivate.
The band’s sound is not the only aesthetic aspect that is singularly evocative. Their visual concept is simple but striking. Framed against sequined curtains, they line up democratically in rank, no-one at the helm. The stage is lit by a single shade of colour at any time. As one song concludes and another introduces itself, the lights shift and we move through peach, spearmint, lapis lazuli, blood red and dollhouse pink. The lights combine with the clouds of dry ice to produce a distinct mood for each tune, the overall effect being that of living in an Instagram filter.
Single Tieduprightnow breaks from the rule as each band member is lit by a different part of the rainbow. It gains the biggest reaction from the crowd and has all the hallmarks of a classic, like they’ve travelled back in time and wrenched it from Barry Gibb’s sweating palms.
The night closes as a blur as guitarist Jules Crommelin and Hill part the crowd like Moses and jump down to boogie with everyone else. Crommelin declares “You’re gorgeous!” to the crowd. One by one they leave the stage, leaving only Serret playing the drums until the beat stops and he too waves goodnight.
I had intended this to be a short review, but there are just too many interesting musical ideas in Parcels’ repertoire to write about. It would have been easy to knock-off some shorthand about how the band sound a bit Voyage, a bit Beach Boys, a bit Random Access Memories. But laziness gets you nowhere. The songs are key, and more interesting than perhaps betrayed by these reference points. Besides, in a world full of copies, the only crime is being found out.
Parcels are a band on the up-and-up. Their star is rising and it’s by no means difficult to picture them cleaning up come festival season. You’d have to be deaf to disagree. They are one of these bands that have a little something to satisfy everyone. They’d be equally at home entertaining the gurning weekend-hippies at Glastonbury as they would the tire-kickers annually drafted in to fill the fields for RiZE. It’s just good music. Good music built on solid foundations with enough interesting textures and left-turns to intrigue the chin-stroking muso bores like myself and enough midtempo pump and melody to muster the moving hips of the pretty young things.
Well done, Parcels!
Photography by Mark Wheelwright (markwheelwright.co.uk)
