Concert Review from Bumerang Club, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Summer 2002

Impure Thoughts are a rock and roll band.

They work with a traditional form but manage to inject it with originality and fresh energy.

After playing together around Europe (Scotland, France, Czechoslovakia and Ireland before moving up to Berlin a few years ago) for something like fifteen years, one can tell that they have stuck together through thick and thin, as tight a band as I have heard for some time, with the harmonies of the bass player and the two guitarists, who swapped the lead vocalist slot with each song, moving easily from a mellifluous warmth to rising crescendos, while their French drummer provided a tasty rhythmic backing, playing what amounted to small melodies on the instrument.

This band should be playing stadiums. I found myself left with the impression that while it’s always a nice surprise to hear such a cracking band in a small out-of-the-way venue like this, something somewhere must have gone wrong with a music business that’s left a band like this out in the cold. By the time they left the stage (after the apparently obligatory visit from the local constabulary) the crowd were roaring.

It was a beautiful evening and I left invigorated and refreshed, ready to withstand another week of mind-numbing radio and MTV drivel, reminded of what music is really meant to be about

Noel Maurice www.pirateradioberlin.de