Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Still playing with the format. You should be able to click on the photos in the following review to see larger pictures.
Bloc Party and The Rakes, The Metro Club
It’s Monday night, and we’re at The Metro Club, which means we’re half way through our three-gigs-in-a-week marathon. The reviews are going to be out of sequence because I left my review of last Thursday’s Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs gig on the desk at my day job.
The doors have just opened and the bar area is already packed with this week’s trendy hair cut with punters paying £3.20 a pop for a can of Grolsh, which is pretty pricey, even for London. Still we can’t complain as we only paid 6 quid a ticket got 3 bands (tonight’s flavour: Angular guitar pop), so we shell out for a lager and wait for the bands.
First on, The Rakes, who posses the same sartorial styling as Franz Ferdinand, with a sharp wit (acknowledging the liggers on the guest list by asking for a show of hands from the guest listers) and an arty sound to match. They’re the poppiest band on the bill tonight with immediate songs, sounding at times a little like Billy Childish.During the first song the band look very nervous and its even-odds on whether they’ll make it to the end. I suspect that this is one of their first gigs – or maybe there are important record company types in the club tonight. Three songs in and all of the nerves have gone, replaced
by a really exciting performance. The band bounce off of each other with the singer and guitarist sharing a mic in the same, slightly homoerotic way, that Carl and Pete Libertine do. In fact, tonight’s performance shares the electric feel of a Libs gig.They play the new single, ‘In The City’, with its “In The City/ 22 grand job” refrain, which is likely to trouble the charts when it’s released in May, and should ensure that they’ll be headlining larger venues by the summer.
Second band on are a nameless 5 piece (they don’t tell us their name and I can’t find it in any of the flyers) who are very much overshadowed by The Rakes. I’m sure I’ve seen this band before but I can’t place where or when – the singer looks very familiar. The songs are OK, but we’ve been spoilt too early in the evening. Time for another Grolsh.
And so on to Bloc Party. The first thing you notice is Kele – he has a quality, call it the star quality, which drives the band from the front.My previous review noted the similarities with early U2 and Blur. And it’s all there tonight in the effects applied to the guitars and Kele’s vocal delivery. The Blur link is also there in the
link to US Indie bands (namely Sonic Youth). The U2 similarities also extend into the lyrics, which have a political slant (check out the website which reads like a manifesto).Tonight’s set is a little short – Matt, the drummer, is keen to play on and stays on stage after a 1 song encore until the band relent and join him for a run through of an early b-side.
The new single, the band’s second, is out in May and this is their 4th visit to The Metro Club. Tonight’s performance isn’t as electrifying as the first time I saw them, but to be fair they’ve spent the last month on the road. Tonight the acclaim belongs to their peers, The Rakes, who stole the show early on.
