Estrons, Boy Azooga: Buyers Club, Liverpool

Boy Azooga

As Estrons play Buyers Club as part of their UK tour, Getintothis’ Cath Bore has her head turned by support band Boy Azooga.

On sight, Boy Azooga seem a straightforward sort of lot, in plaid shirts and with an easy manner.

It’s singer Davey Newington looking the most wholesome, and not unlike that famous photo of John Lennon playing with The Quarrymen at Woolton Village fete in 1957, so it’s all a bit of a shock when the Cardiff-based band hit the ground pretty much running with cheery, psychedelic dance-pop.

It’s clear the foursome draw from a refreshingly broad musical palette, digging into funk grooves before flipping back out again; adding maracas and tambourine into the mix, pretty soon there’s a heck of a party going on.

Although Boy Azooga join Estrons for this tour and they’ve supported the likes of The Orielles, Sweet Baboo, CaStLeS, and H. Hawkline, plus opened the Far Out stage Green Man Festival this summer, they’ve only been playing live since the tail end of last year and to be frank, you wouldn’t know it.

Come back to Liverpool and shake your maracas at us again soon, Boy Azooga. Missing you already. There’s an album coming soon, and we trust only good things await us.

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It’s been an eventful couple of weeks for Estrons, singer Tali Källström making the decision to withdraw the band from the Paul Draper tour for well publicised reasons. Taking back control is a ghastly term brandished in 2017 by Trump, Brexiteers and the more pompous of politicians, but in this case it seems no other description will do. Hers is an onwards and upwards decision, much applauded and respected.

#respect #womeninmusic pic.twitter.com/c02RwBQmqB

— Estrons (@ESTRONS_MUSIC) September 16, 2017

The last time Estrons played Liverpool in February it was in amongst the soft furnishings of Studio 2, but it makes more sense for a straight ahead rock band such as them to be in the bricks and bare floorboards upstairs bunker that is Buyers Club.

Källström prowls the stage, and works it, like the seventy or so people enthusing in front of her are thousands in the Echo Arena. Because this audience do love Estrons, there’s a dedication you can’t fake. ‘Let’s go fucking mental!’ instructs Källström, and although no one goes that far, and Estrons don’t stretch or challenge hugely, it’s an enjoyable set.

The highlight has to be, surely, the witty Make A Man: ‘You seem so calm and cool and collected, I wanna take you a out all night…I’d like to make a man out of you…’ which raising a smirk, and showing, very much, that this is a woman – and band – very much in control of things. Bravo.

Pictures by Getintothis’ Tomas Adam.