They may be awkward and just a bit too clever, but Tim Hughes predicts the future belongs to Bright Works

THERE’S nothing more painful than watching a live performance which is teetering on the brink of falling apart.

Bright Works look like a rag-taggle bunch of misfits pulled together who really shouldn’t be in a band, and their on-stage banter isn’t much better. Awkwardly mumbling something about being a “math-rock” band and then making a joke which only the other band members get is not the most auspicious start to a set.

But the thing about these Vale of White Horse boys is that they couldn’t give a flying fig about witty banter, they are all about the material. Once they start performing their shaky chat is transformed into flying fits of drum fills, sparky guitar and white boy funky bass.

And over the top of it lead singer Liam Amies, from Wantage, enters a sometimes trance-like state, chanting poetic mantras about his head being full of butterflies, birds and bees. Guitarist (and Oxford Mail reporter) Pete Hughes, also from Wantage, explains that his principle aim is to achieve a perfect clarity of sound.

“I was always really impressed by the Edmund Fitzgerald, Yannis and Jack’s band before Foals,” he says. “They had this amazingly pure guitar sound, they always said it was supposed to be like ‘rays of transparent sunshine’. “What I really love are funky beats that shake your hips for you; those weird hypnotic rhythms that get into your bones and shake them, that you can’t help but dance to.”

But dancing to Bright Works can be a challenge. The band take a perverse pride in using odd-numbered time signatures which mean that to the uninitiated, actually finding a beat to dance to can be difficult.

listen to ‘The Oxford Mail talk about play Bright Works - If You Have Any Sweet Nothings’ on Audioboom

Their latest single, however, the challengingly-named If You Have Any Sweet Nothings Whisper Them Now, does away with all cleverness. It is a stripped-back tribute to some of the band’s Motown influences, with a perverse Kraut-rock twist on it. A sort-of darkly comic love song. You can see the band in action at Saturday’s Oxjam Oxford Takeover.

They play the Cellar at 8pm.