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Connan Mockasin, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas

Live Reviews

Endearingly and bafflingly crazy.

11th December 2011, Butlins, Minehead / By Danny Wright
Connan Mockasin, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas

Connan Mockasin, ATP Nightmare Before Christmas, by Phil Smithies

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Arriving on stage in what looks like a woman’s blouse from the 60s Connan Mockasin looks like he’s from another time. In fact, he also regularly seems to be from another planet. However he has travelled to ATP in his time-machine to play his psychedelic shoegaze hyms and soothe the hangovers of this Sunday afternoon ATP crowd.

The set starts slowly – Mockasin seems lethargic, his delicate vocals get lost and the jams meander rather than captivate. Someone shouts to him "Are you the Afghan Whigs?". He unsurprisingly looks bemused. Bathed in red light and taking swigs straight from a bottle of red wine he is nervous and edge and it makes for an unengaging set. "Stop heckling me please, it’s been a tough three weeks in my life."

That’s not to say the songs aren’t there. Mockasin’s brand of dreamy, floaty, shoegaze is just what is needed – and things do finally start to fall into place with the ten-minute epic ‘Big Dolphin Love’ which builds and swells until it swallows your headache completely.

This should be the end of the set but when he’s told he still has 5 minutes left Mockasin decides to do a song about lizards from his new project Soft Hair which he has formed with Late Of The Pier's Sam Eastgate. Eastgate joins him as he acts like a lizard, raps and does a spoken narrative in which he keeps shouting "You lied to me". It encapsulates Mockasin – endearingly and bafflingly crazy. Rating: 6/10
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