Last week, Green Door Store was host to another glorious night of alt music for the lovely January-friendly sum of £3.

If you haven’t checked out one of these shows yet, pick at random and get yourself down - you never know what gem you’ll stumble upon.

Headlined by big long sun with support from Radio Anorak and Freddie J Watts & The Hot Rocks, the night rolled from bluesy cowboy rock into raucous avant-rock’n’roll and closed in an expansive psychedelic dream haze.

Freddie J Watts & The Hot Rocks opened the night with a warm country embrace. Freddie’s husky, low vocals - reminiscent of a cowboy troubadour - paired beautifully with the harmonies of Flip Top Head’s Bowie Bartlett. On opener 'Funny Life', they wove tender reflections on life’s small joys with biting observations on life’s larger contradictions – a theme that seems to run through much of Freddie’s reflective songwriting.

Anchored by both delicate melodies and driving rhythms, their set shifted between the folky musings of ‘Sweet Lady’ and the country rock grit of ‘Rolling On’. A good sprinkling of glam rock glitter and jazz flourishes featured throughout with Freddie swapping guitar for saxophone on a couple of numbers. The six-piece closed their show with the rollicking ‘Entwined’ featuring a pulsating bassline and impassioned vocals that jolted the audience into dance.

Sadly, this was the last show together for The Hot Rocks but we’re already excited to hear more from the cowboy Freddie J Watts.

Next up, Radio Anorak took to the stage with a unique art-rock meets experimental punk fever dream of The Velvet Underground, CAN and Neu! derivation. 

From the moment they launched into their opening track - a strangely hypnotic inconsecutive numerical countdown - the crowd were locked in.

Lyrical themes ranged from an imagined conversation with David Lynch (complete with bizarre ponderings about haircuts and four-egg breakfasts) to poetic incantations like, “my breath is someone else’s dream”, and a love letter wrapped in a doo-wop bop. The frontman's delivery oscillated between spoken-word poetry, seemingly improvised stream of consciousness storytelling, and outright bellowing, all underpinned by head-spinning krautrock instrumentation.

A surreal tale of stumbling upon two greyhounds that morphed into black crows and mystically became strapped to the narrator’s feet, allowing him to take flight through misty fields and meet an assemblage of ancestors, lingered in our minds. As if we were lingering in the narrator’s own mind. A blurry experience.

Radio Anorak made us think and made us move. Their sound embodies a refreshing kind of ambiguous creative liberation. Is it music? Poetry? A jam? We’re not sure. Go and decide for yourself - that might just be the whole point.

big long sun closed the night with a lovely concoction of psychedelic fuzzy rock and eccentric art-pop grooves. 

Evolving from Jamie Broughton’s solo bedroom project and 2024 debut LP big long sun, the now eight-piece band has formed into a pretty formidable ensemble. Their lineup includes guitars, bass, drums, synth, samples, and all manner of percussion. The only absence on this occasion was their violinist, prompting Jamie to muse, “we’ve lost our violinist – has anyone seen her?”

Jamie’s impressive vocal range and distinctive pedal-distorted tone were elevated by a trio of backing vocalists, two of whom experimented playfully at the top of the scale, creating sounds and verbal shapes that acted as another instrumental layer in the group’s already rich tapestry of sound. Tracks from the album like ‘the sound’, ‘such a scream’, and ‘love in a day’ delivered the band’s signature blend of dreamy psychedelia, 60s fuzz, and artful chaos.

Halfway through the set, new track ‘heaven is by your side’ offered a sweet moment of yearning romantic jangle to the set that departed from the recording and transitioned into an alt-rock breakdown complete with cathartic screams and yelps.

The final track, ‘between the air and the water’, saw Jamie sling his guitar on his back and double up on drums with one of the singers amplifying siren wails through a megaphone, layering sound upon sound in a climactic build that spiraled into a ritualistic drone, leaving us to revel in a blissful daze.

big long sun operate in between satisfying contrasts – dreamy and frenzied, polished and raw, dancey and a little bit thrashy. We love the big long creative vision.

The perfect way to kick the January blues and drag ourselves out of hibernation. Don’t miss the next 3 quid gig at GDS.