Project Overload: Record Store Day 2025 gig
Review
Having addressed the current unease around independent venues' sustainability in my last review, now onto the equivalent need to support record stores: specifically through the attention focusing medium of Record Store Day 2025.
Just Dropped In in FarGo Coventry is also a frequent live venue ("two birds with one stone") and yesterday after the initial rush of purchasers had died down (though it's worth saying that I was delighted to pick up my own RSD 2025 target even at 1700), there were live performances by Project Overload plus Sleap E ("lo fi punk from Bologna, Italy") and Plum Jr ("shoegaze inspired indie punk from Bristol"): that this review focuses on the first only in no way reflects any lack of esteem towards the latter two, simply my own circumstances.
When they announced the gig, my comment on social media was the following:
"If any single artist epitomised the brand new wave of young exciting and wholly original music currently emerging in Coventry & Warwickshire, it could well be Project Overload. Certainly the word is spreading far beyond the county borders."
Since I stand by that & rejoice in their continuing growth, it seems reasonable to reproduce it here.
It wasn't just RSD but singer Emily's birthday so a double reason for celebration & it was interesting to see the significant audience overlap with the previous night at The Tin: a chance to say hello again to people I'd only said good night to hours before. People with much taste for the best original music.
Part of the band's strength is their continual growth: not just their developing stage presence but the range of their music. Yes, the janglepop is still bright as ever with its sharp elbows, but across the set (and they now have too many new songs to fit into it) there are slow burners which demonstrate their ability to let space into the dynamic & of the new songs (in true Project Overload style the titles have yet to be decided) one sounds like a really great potential single & the closer is potentially their "Heart of Glass": a disco orientated groove which shows yet another facet to what they can do. It's appropriately about dancing.
If you want harder performance indicators than my qualitative praise for a band so obviously heading somewhere, then I noted how busy their merch stall was (and if you missed my praise of their new merch in February: it's classy stuff at excellent value prices. I'd have bought a T shirt myself had I not already got mine & was wearing it).
Watch out too for their second album later this year!
