In and among the Two Door Cinema Club social media rush last week, I did notice another conversational trend cropping up in my various newsfeeds. It was one that easily permeated the digital brane into real life and followed me around right up until the Two Door press conference:
“So what is 5 Gum anyway?”
Image courtesy of Simon Archer (@VinylDestZA)
There’s this thing international bands do when they’re up on stage in front of you, instruments throbbing in-hand, sweat rushing from every pore and the heavenly electric pallor of strobe lights flashing over their faces: they say “Thank you, South Africa”; “We’re really happy to be here”; and the one that always launches the crowd into hysterics, “We hope to come back again soon”. We know none of it’s real but we still eat it up, screeching like a flock of sex-starved banshees wishing we could be just that inch closer to them, to perhaps reach out and touch some of the holy rock ‘n roll energy wafting through the air around our new favourite band. The thing about Two Door Cinema Club is, when lead singer Alex Trimble leaned up to the microphone and said that, it didn’t sound like the usual PR-trained leading man putting on a performance. There was a glint in his eye and a sheen to his skin – freckling in the heat coming off of the 5000-strong crowd – and the tiniest smile of self-awareness that made it all seem so much more real.
A girl once told me Two Door Cinema Club sounded like The All-American Rejects, but what did she know anyway?