January Roundup

We’ve been busy over the last month – here are the highlights.

Our first gig of the year was a very laid back affair to ease us into 2005 with James Blunt at 93 feet east. James was OK, but only really held the attention of the room when he dropped his backing band for a 3 song solo set, during which the venue seemed to contract and become almost claustrophobic. I don’t think I’ve ever been at a gig where not a single person is speaking and the musician(s) have everyone’s full attention. James needs to repeat this outside of his ex-Army fulhamites (how many times you do see people ordering bottles of red wine at a gig!) if he’s going to stand a chance in the mainstream.

Business as usual resumed the following week with a four band art-rocker night at The Garage. Top of the bill were Art Brut, on top form as usual. All of our favorite songs got an airing and frontman Eddie Argos rather inadvisably lost his shirt to the girls in the front row and spent the rest of the set looking rather self conscious about baring himself. Also on the bill and worth a mention were Mando Diao, who play art rock in a Strokes/Hives style with their tongues very definitely in their cheeks. This band definitely play for the fun, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t know how to write catchy pop songs. North London band, The Rocks, are also worth your time with an interesting mix of garage guitars and dance beats. Last, and only worth a mention for completeness were Irish band The Chalets; we’ve seen them before and they are only marginally better than last time. Best avoided unless you liked Bis, in which case you will love them.

And our next gig took us from The Garage, a small venue on our doorstep, to The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for the Tsunami Relief gig. Now this gig really isn’t our normal territory, but it is for charity and when it was first advertised the billing was rumored to include U2 and Coldplay. So it was with some trepidation we headed off to see Keane, Snow Patrol, Alled Jones, Charlotte Church, Jules Holland etc.etc. And actually, we had a pretty good day. Keane, not one of my favorite bands, actually played a good opening set to warm up the freezing crowd. Other highlights of the day were Snow Patrol, Feeder, Manic Street Preachers (they really are so iffy – last time I saw them they were very dull) and Embrace. Of course, Badly Drawn Boy was really good, despite loosing the crowd half way through his set with some technical difficulties and some bad language. So, not our usual type of gig – but a change is as good as a rest, and actually a pretty good day out for a worthy cause.

And finally for January, although the gig was actually on the 1st Feb, The Dears at The Electric Ballroom. This gig was upgraded from the slightly smaller Scala because of demand for tickets. The Dears are a real discovery for us – we bought the tickets on the strength of end of year album reviews, so tonight is a bit of an unknown. OK, so I went out and bought the album No Cities Left 3 days before the gig, but really this is all new territory for us. Most reviews that I’ve read compare this band to The Smiths, but for me they are much closer Blur, particularly the gospel bits of Blur (e.g. The Universal and Tender.) and the whole experience is truly uplifting. Support is from old friends of ours Pure Reason Revolution and hotly tipped new New York band Ambulance Ltd. Now, I really, really want to like Pure Reason Revolution because they obviously love the same bands as I do (namely, Pink Floyd and Radiohead) and they have no fear of writing and performing a 10 minute track. My problem is that Kasabian have now made the Psychedelic beats sound their own now and have made the jump to the mainstream – it remains to be seen whether PRR can make this jump too. The one thing they need to do is pick a direction for a song and stick with it not keep heading off on a tangent that sees every song taking a “kitchen sink too” approach to song writing. In comparison to PRR, Ambulance Ltd are very polished and just a little dull. There best parts are like the best tracks by Pavement, but other parts of the set sound like The Thrills. So the jury is still out for Ambulance Ltd.

February is <NME Awards' shows month and we’re off to see The Killers and Bloc Party on Wednesday and The Tears and The Magic Numbersnext week.

- posted by Nigella @ 6:48 PM