Ist Ist / Indoor Pets / The Covasettes / Phoebe Green - Sheffield Network - 27th July 2024 (2024)

Close to Sheffield station there's a hoarding that proclaims Sheffield as "Music City" and of course there's a Pulp song that makes the same claim. Other cities might dispute that, but for one weekend Sheffield becomes unarguably the focus. With Tramlines Festival taking over Hillsborough Park with tens of thousands flocking to the three day festival, whilst its roots in the city at Devonshire Green and the surrounding streets as a free festival have been taken over by the Tramlines Fringe where hundreds of artists keep with the original spirit of the festival and play for free.

Across town over three rooms at Network there's another event on Saturday, strangely unadvertised in the official Fringe brochure, making it a fringe of the fringe and clearly impacting numbers by putting on such a range of artists and hardly telling anyone about it. In the main room we caught Ist Ist, Pet Needs, The Covasettes and Phoebe Green playing a free to attend event to less people than each of them have played or are playing soon, significantly so in the case of some of them.

The first act we catch in the main room is Phoebe Green, someone we haven't seen in quite a while. Performing with sister Lucy behind a bank of synths and free to roam the stage, Phoebe is very much doing her own thing musically these days rather than trying to fit a mould dictated by the industry and that energy and joy transmits through her performance to the small but engaged crowd there to see her. Mixing songs from her second album and her recent EP Ask Me Now, the highlight of which is I Think I'm Getting Boring, it's an energetic and entertaining set.

The Covasettes treat every gig like they're headlining a stadium and despite starting late with technical issues today is no exception, pretending they're doing a big cool walk on when they've been on stage ten minutes sorting out the problems and engaging with the crowd as if there were tens of thousands there rather than tens. Their songs are unashamedly upbeat and made for festivals and hot sweaty rooms. Front man Chris is engaging and relentlessly positive and their songs like Love In Polaroid and Be Mine, which finishes their short but sweet set, wouldn't have felt out of place at the festival proper on the outskirts of town.

The penultimate band of the night in Network 1 are Indoor Pets and like The Covasettes they treat it as a headline set, not surprisingly given their recent string of sold out shows in support of their album Pathetic Apathetic. Hard to pin down and box in, songs like Barbiturates and the set-closing London (Love To Hate) have a rawness to them that transmits itself from the stage to the audience and connects with those who don't know them prior warm to them as the set progresses as well as it does their hardcore fans. Front man Jamie is engaging, energetic and enthusiastic and the four of them's love of performing and belief in what they're doing makes them a fun watch.

Ist Ist headline, their final indoor show before the release of their fourth album Light A Bigger Fire on September 20, and they take the opportunity to debut two songs from that record - What I Know and Something Else - as well as its three singles to date - Lost My Shadow, The Kiss and Repercussions as well as the forthcoming Dreams Aren't Enough, released this coming Friday. Supremely confident in these songs as well as the everlasting power of songs from their impressive back catalogue - Black, Stamp You Out, You're Mine, Nothing More Nothing Less and the exhilarating Emily - they deliver a set that delights the faithful who've made the trek from various points across the country as well as those curious onlookers who've solved the magical mystery puzzle of finding the whole event.

Adam Houghton's vocals sit dead centre throughout, betraying just enough emotion to let the listener in without giving everything away. His guitars fuse into the melting pot of Andy Keating's bass, Mat Peters' guitars and synth and Joel Kay's ferocious drumming that both fuel the songs and give them the bold unbreakable structures that have served Ist Ist so well in bigger spaces and crowds than this both here and abroad. They're primed and ready now for when the gatekeepers of the industry finally let them in.