Splendid

Happy jingling guitar tunes that might have been straight off a 80s pop song; a bass you can only feel, hardly hear; soft echoing vocals, as if coming from the back of your head rather than from the stage; and all of that covered up and floating weightlessly in a sea of swaying shoe-gaze-guitars. This excellent mixture, sometimes sad, sometimes bittersweet, always mesmerising – that’s the Ruling Class and I was fortunate to be there when they played the tiny stage in Hamburg’s newly renovated “Gruener Jaeger”.
A warm spring evening, a Tuesday night actually, and going to see the young London-based indie-band was almost a last minute resolution. I had seen the posters of the band the Saturday before when Darling, one of my flatmates and me hit the club for some serious boogie… In any case, apart from knowing one or two songs from the bands MySpace, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. What a favourable surprise, when I figured that it wasn’t going to be one of those equal-stage/audience-ratio concerts with three undecided guys sitting in the back and two dressed up but drunk birds dancing uninspired in front of the stage. Quite the contrary. No concert tourists at all. Rather, half of Hamburg’s indie scene had gathered to take a serious look at that up and coming band. So here I was again, in the middle of many familiar faces and even a bunch of friends, blown away by the sound and – simply – happy. A splendid night.