Magnapop - Melody Maker Review

June 27, 1992 - Rocking Kolonia Festival, Maastricht

"Look at the people in the trees!" cries singer Linda Hopper halfway through this triumphant surprise appearance at a Dutch festival. The very fact that Magnapop are big enough here to justify a surprise appearance puts a grin on her face, but when she sees loads of fair-headed pink persons hurling themselves towards the stage and hanging out of horse chestnut trees 50 yards away she can't help but laugh out loud. Then they play "Merry" and the place erupts. People start falling out of the trees like conkers. This is wild.

I'm here because I heard that song, "Merry", and the three others on their debut "Sugarland" EP and thought them quite splendid. Their press officer suggested a trip to Holland to catch this gig. Several hours after leaving home I'm wedged between a bunch of lobster-coloured blonde boys (fairly regular weekend practise that, actually) in a field full of pissed foreign teens awaiting a band I know nothing about.

I'd like to recommend this. In fact, I suggest you stop reading this review immediately and just go to their next available gig. Still here? Okay, they come on and there's two guys and two women and punk is reborn. Bassist Shannon Mulvaney wears his instrument low-slung and his shorts down to the knee. He pounds around the stage like Tigger on speed, somehow managing, simultaneously, to keep up a useful melodic rumble while his colleague in rhythm David McNair plays the drums like his kit done him wrong. Meanwhile, stage right/crowd left, guitarist Ruth Morris is teaching her axe a lesson too. Take that. Clang. And that. Screech. Suck on this. Krooinnngg. It's a feral sound, always on the brink of tearing somebody's head off. She can only just keep it under control.

And all this time, Linda Hopper is grinning, snaking coolly at the mike, rocking on the balls of her feet, pacing a few steps to and fro and panting her way through her unusual lyrics. She has the calm air of a queen that's stumbled into a mud-wrestling contest. She tames the manic sound with her presence and then steps back, makes herself invisible for a moment, letting Ruth's wayward noise take over. Or Shannon's. Or David's. Am I doing this justice? Are you getting the picture? They are a controlled explosion. Linda is attractively in control. Ruth is attractively out of it. Shannon looks dangerously deranged. David is thunderous. They flicker, they dodge, they juggle with your perceptions.

One second they seem mature and certain and the next they're brattish and sloppy. First they're cuddly then they're murderous. Shouldn't all groups be this way, dripping with personality, three dimensional?

I can do you some song titles, if you like. They've got great songs like "Garden", "Spill It" and a new one called "Get It Right" where they fail to take their own advice but it's ambitious and full of hooks and surprises without losing its intense boulder-down-a-mountain momentum. Another few people tumble from the trees. The sun comes out.

I don't know what I was expecting from the records but I was confused when they first took the stage and unleashed their set. I was wide-eyed, stunned, enthralled, converted when they left. Assuming it wasn't a fluke I can only recommend them higher than the sun. Er, that's it.

Jim Arundel