Sergeant, Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh
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Your support makes all the difference."Thanks to all the familiar faces," was how Sergeant singer Nick Mercer signed off from this show, "and a few new ones, as well." The quartet are from Glenrothes in Fife, less than an hour's drive north of Edinburgh, so this Edge festival gig fell somewhere between a big deal and a local show.
Support on their home patch is all well and good, of course, but a young band who are somewhere between their limited release first single and the completion of their debut album will need a bigger push towards national attention. Like, for example, a longtime affiliation with the same Dundee scene that spawned The View, and the backing of Alan McGee as "the sound of young Scotland today". The last group their Oasis-discovering fellow Scot described in similar terms was Glasvegas.
But Mercer, guitarist Scott Duncan, bassist Bill Anderson and drummer Rory Buchanan are, in fact, more reminiscent of the janglesome summer breeze of Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits.
There's a lightness of touch and an earthy sensitivity on songs like "I Love It Here", "Sunshine" and that single "K-OK". The way Mercer almost messianically fronts up to the crowd while singing "It All Comes Back To Me" – "this is the one thing you all wanted" – however, reveals one notion he should be disabused of right away – Sergeant are not, and won't be, the new Stone Roses.
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