Mothership/Hooligan Choir

Chaplins, Cellar Bar

Thursday Nights at Chaplin’s means “Rubber Soul” a platform by promoter Conrad Barr to showcase locals bands from in and around the local Dorset area. Tonight first band are Bournemouth 3 piece “Hooligan Choir” who recently impressed a Sold Out crowd at Mr Kyps in Poole when supporting the mighty “Pigeon Detectives”. The band arrive onstage full of youthful arrogance in the way that the way Paul Weller did in the early days of The Jam or more recently The Enemy.

The band create a thoroughly enjoyable quality noise performing a hatful of great original songs including “Born To Be Mild” which has more than just a passing resemblance to Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World”. A reworked cover The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” confirms that these lads have been riffling through their Dad’s record collections and have drawn some nice “Welleresque” influences along the way. “Hooligan Blues” gives further attitude and some serious pace towards the end of the set with some skilful quality guitar work backed ably by a rock solid rhythm section who impressed throughout. With a few more gigs under their belt and an album release “Hooligan Choir” could easily make a name for themselves if the get their music out to the right audiences.

Hooligan Choir 1

Tonight’s headliners are the three Jenkins brothers band “Mothership”, a 5 piece full on rock band from the Bournemouth area. These guys certainly know how to rock and have been gigging in and around the area for quite a while impressing audiences. The band open with a brand new track called “Rock’n’ Roll Tonight” which includes their trademark twin guitar sound influenced mainly by the original classic rock sound, the guitar solo is something very special and is performed by the very talented Marcus Jenkins(Sparky) who has learnt his craft well and impresses throughout the set. Despite the place being fairly empty tonight the band are given huge encouragement from their number one fan, Matt, Marcus and Ash’s Mum, having 3 son’s in the band is enough for any Mother to cope with, but it is great to see this sort of parental encouragement giving the whole band a huge lift. The rest of the band’s performance produces more quality songs from their debut EP “Landed and Loaded” including the spine tingling “Ghost Story” and the slow burning “Goodbye” which could easily become a song audiences grow to love singing along at the tops of their voices. This gig is the first in a series of Summer Tour dates for the band, if you are a rock fan try and catch them live you won’t be disappointed.