I saw these guys after Swee Leng sent me a link to their myspace page with a note that their music reminded her of some of the stuff I liked; in the event, I only listened to a couple of their songs (maybe only one) before the show, thinking that seeing them live was likely to be a more rewarding way of sussing out whether I'd actually like them. So it turns out that the Crayon Fields are, on the evidence of last night, pretty good and, yes, the kind of stuff that I do tend to like. Charming colourful guitar pop with an orchestral bent and a strong 60s and early 70s influence drawn from several threads of that decade - the Byrds/Big Star-esque chiming Rickenbacker-type guitars and harmonies, surf rock rhythms and Nancy & Lee touches being especially prominent, and some nice tunes and instrumentation to go with it (not forgetting the masked figures!)...keeping the songs short, too - a good move for this style of pop, I think.
There were a couple of supports - missed the first one, but the second, Minimum Chips, were quite fab. As far as analogies go, maybe think equal parts Architecture in Helsinki, New Buffalo and My Bloody Valentine which all up was, as you might expect, rather good.
(The crowd, by the way, was the most 'scene' that I've seen for ages.)
So, all up pretty impressive.
